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Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 

in  2011  with  funding  from 

Research  Library,  The  Getty  Research  Institute 


http://www.archive.org/details/electricitycamerOOiles 


FLAME,    ELECTRICITY,    AND 
THE    CAMERA 


A 


A.   B  and  C 
i  OMBINED 


A  and  B 

I  i  iMBINED 


Plate  I. 

Basilarchia  Icirquini,  Boisduval,    '.      (I-orquin's  Admiral.  I 
From  The  Bviterfly  Hock,  by  Dr.  VV   J.  Holland 

A  REPRODUCTION  OF  A  BUTTERFLY   BY  THE   THREE-COLOUR    PROCESS. 
Showing  separate  printing  of  each  plate,  A,  I!,  and  C;  the  first  and  second  plates  combined,  and  the  finished  picture. 

See  page  sSS. 


Flame,  Electricity  and 
the  Camera 


Man's  Progress  from  the 

First  Kindling  of  Fire  to  the  Wireless  Telegraph 

and  the  Photography  of  Color 


By  George  lies 


New  York 

Doubleday  &  McClure  Co. 

1900 


Copyright,  1900,  by 

DOUBLKDAY    &    McCLURE    Co. 


TO 

JAMES   DOUGLAS,   LL.D. 

OF   NEW    YORK 


O 


CD 

no 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

i.  Introductory i 

ii.  Flame  and  its  First  Uses 8 

in.  The  First  Gains  from  Kindled  Flame    ....  24 

iv.  The  Mastery  of  Metals 35 

v.  Motive  Power  from  Fire 48 

vi.  The  Banishment  of  Heat 64 

vii.  The  Higher  Teachings  of  Fire 79 

viii.  The  Production  of  Electricity 94 

ix.  Electric  Heat no 

x.  Electric  Light 121 

xi.  Electric  Batteries 135 

xii.  Electricity    in   the   Service  of  the   Mechanic 

and  the  Engineer 153 

xiii.  Telegraphy  —  Land  Lines 177 

xiv.  Cable  Telegraphy 193 

xv.  Multiplex  Telegraphy      207 

xvi.  Wireless  Telegraphy 215 

xvn.  The  Telephone 228 

xviii.  Electricity  —  A  Review  and  a  Prospect    .    .    .  247 

xix.  The  Threshold  of  Photography 262 

xx.  Truth  of  Form  —  Translation  and  Reproduc- 
tion of  Colour 276 

xxi.  Swiftness  and  Adaptability — The  Dry  Plate  — 

A  New  World  Conquered 290 

xxn.  The    Work    of    Quick    Plates  —  Photographic 

Reproduction 311 

xxiii.  Photography  of  the  Skies 325 

xxiv.  Photography  and  Electricity  as  Allies     .    .    .  346 

xxv.  Language 364 

xxvi.  The  Ancestry  of  Man    in  the   Light   of   Nine- 
teenth-century Advances 379 

Appendix:  The  Golden  Age  of  Science  ....  386 
vii 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


Plate 

I. 

Fig. 

i. 

a 

2. 

a 

3- 

a 

4- 

a 

5- 

6. 

7- 

8. 

9- 

10. 

n. 

12. 

J3- 

14. 

!S- 

16. 

i7- 

18. 

19. 

20. 

21. 

22. 

23- 

24. 

Plate 

II. 

Fig. 

25- 

<( 

26. 

Plate 

Ill 

Butterfly  in  natural  colors    .     .     .     Frontispiece 

Making  fire.     Hupa  Indians Page  15 

Strike-a-light  in  use "16 

Iroquois  pump-drill  for  making  fire      ...  "17 

Fire-making  by  sawing      .     „ "18 

Flint  and  steel,  Otoe  Indians "19 

Eskimo  lamp "24 

Hero's  reolipile "29 

Primitive  bronze  horn "38 

Westinghouse  compound  engine     ....  "     51 

Interior,  Parsons  steam-turbine       ....  "54 

Baldwin  locomotive Facing  page  57 

Parsons- Westinghouse   > 

turbo-alternator      \  3/ 

Lancashire  boiler Page  58 


Fire  in  tube.     Water  in  tube 

Babcock  &  Wilcox  water-tube  boiler       .     . 

Refrigerator,  Frick  Co 

Air  compressed,  then  expanded      .... 
Vacuum  by  use  of  liquid  hydrogen      .     ,     . 

Dewar  flask 

Interference  water-waves 

Interference  light-waves 

Gilbert's  electroscope 

Von  Guericke's  first  electrical  machine     .     . 
Electrical  repulsion  and  attraction       .     .     . 

Volta Facing  page 

Galvani's  experiment Page 

Volta's  pile " 

Faraday Facing  page  105 


59 
59 
66 

7i 
74 
78 
80 
80 
96 
97 

99 

100 
100 
100 


x  ILLUSTRATIONS 

Fig.  27.  Volta's  crown  of  cups       ....     Facing  page  107 

"  28.  Orsted's  experiment Page  103 

"  29.  Solenoid "     104 

"  30.  Magnetic  lines  of  force '•     105 

"  31.   Electric  lines  of  force "105 

"  32.  Sturgeon's  electromagnet "105 

"  33.   Henry's  electromagnet "105 

"  34.  Electrical  induction "106 

"  35.   Faraday's  magneto-electric  machine  .   Facing  page  107 

"  36.  Gramme  machine Page   107 

"  37.  Metal  shaped  under  electric  heat    ....  "     111 

"  38.  Old  weld  and  new "112 

"  39-  Water-tank  electric  forge "114 

"  40.  Electric  furnace "114 

"  41.  Electric  blowpipe "     117 

"  42.  First  incandescent  lamp "124 

"  43.  Nernst  lamp "128 

"  44.  Simple  Geissler  tube "129 

"  45.  Geissler  tube  with  external  electrodes       .     .  '-129 

"  46.  Glass  sphere  luminous  between  » 

/  "      i  ^o 

two  metal  plates                       )  ° 

"  47.  Cuban  fire-fly "131 

"  48.  Gutenberg  statue "     139 

"  49.  Storage  battery  plates "146 

"  50.  Ruhmkorff  coil "     157 

"  51.  Electric  motor  and  pump  united     .      Facing  page  162 

"  52.  Armature  of  street-car  motor      ..."  "     162 

"  53.  Third-rail  electric  traction      ....•■  "     165 

"  54.  Henry  telegraph Page  181 

"  55.  Telegraph  relay "184 

"  56.  Grounding  a  circuit "     185 

"  57.  First  glass  insulator "     1K6 

"  58.  Calais-Dover  cable,  185 1        "195 

"  59.  Commercial  cable,  1894 "     202 

"  60.  Condenser "     204 

"  61.  Reflecting  galvanometer "     205 

"  62.  Siphon  recorder "     206 

Plate  IV.  Lord  Kelvin Facing  page  206 

FlG.  63.  Siphon  record      .     .          Page  206 


ILLUSTRATIONS  xi 

Fig.  64.  Delany  perforated  message Page  207 

"     65.  Simple  electromagnet "     209 

"     66.  Signalling  by  reversing  polarity       .     .     .     .       "     210 

"     67.  Double-wound  electromagnet "210 

"     68.  Duplex  telegraph "211 

"     69.  Duplex  telegraph,  hydraulic  model      .     .     .       "     212 

Plate  V.  Edison Facing  page  213 

Fig.  70.  Delany  synchronous  telegraph Page  214 

"     71.   Marconi  coherer "220 

"     72.  Marconi  telegraph  apparatus "221 

"     73.  Discontinuous  waves "225 

"     74.  Wehnelt  interrupter       .     , "226 

"     75.  Lovers'  telegraph "231 

"     76.  Microphone "     232 

"     77.  Telephone  dissected "     233 

"     78.  Telephonic  circuit "     233 

Plate  VI.  Chinese  telephone  substation  .      Facing  page  239 

Fig.  79.  Photophone Page  244 

"     80.  Carving  from  caves,  Dordogne  Valley,  France     "     264 

"     81.   Indian  carving "     266 

"     82.  Maple  leaf  photographed "     269 

"     83.  Amceba "     273 

Plate  VII.   Niepce Facing  page  274 

"     VIII.  Daguerre "       "276 

"        IX.  Flowers  photographed  on  ordi-  ) 

?      "       "     283 
nary  and  orthochromatic  plates  )  ° 

Fig.  84.  Kromskop Page  286 

Plate    X.  Miss  Draper Facing  page  290 

XI.  Swiss  scene  through  ordinary  , 

>98 


and  telephoto  lenses 
"  xii.  plka,  or  little  chief  hare  ..."  "  299 
"  XII.  Deer  photographed  at  night  .  .  "  "  299 
"  XIII.  "The  West  Wind,"  by  J.  Whitall  ) 

Nicholson  )  °  ' 

Fig.  85.  Zoetrope Page  315 

Plate  XIV.  Edison  kinetographic  films    .     Facing  page  316 

"        XV.  Composite  portrait "  "     319 

Fig.  86.  Half-tone  portrait  of  Lord  Kelvin,  )  p 

much  enlarged  ) 


xii  ILLUSTRATIONS 

Fig.  87.  Satellites  of  Saturn Page  329 

Plate  XVI.  Comet  of  1882 Facing  page  330 

Fig.  88.   Doppler  theory  illustrated Page  334 

Plate  XVII.  Spectra  01  Beta  Auriga      .     Facing  page  337 
XVII.  Spectra  of  sun  and  of  ikon      .    «  "    337 

XVIII.  Drawing  of  Nebula  in  Orion.     ■•  "    341 

XIX.  Photograph  of  nebula  in  Orion  "  "     341 

XX.  Spiral  ni  bi  la  and  ring  nebula    "  "    342 

XXI.  Bolometer  spectrum  ..-.."  ••    347 

Fig.  89.  Lenanl  tube Page  350 

"     90.  Crookes  tube  photographing  hand    .     .       "     352 

"     91.   Fargis  recorder "     360 

Plate  XXII.  Lightning  photographed     .      Facing  page  360 

Fig.  92.  Photography  of  sound     ....  .  Page  361 

"     93.  Genesis  of"  R" "375 


PREFACE 

THIS  book  is  an  attempt  briefly  to  recite  the  chief  uses 
of  fire,  electricity,  and  photography,  bringing  the  narrative 
of  discovery  and  invention  to  the  close  of  1899.  In  cover- 
ing so  much  ground  it  has  been  necessary  to  choose  from 
a  vast  array  of  facts  such  of  them  as  are  fairly  representa- 
tive, laying  stress  upon  those  whose  proven  importance  or 
high  promise  gives  them  most  prominence  in  the  public 
mind.  Passing  to  the  laws  which  underlie  invention  and 
discovery,  this  book  endeavours  to  answer  the  question, 
Why  has  the  nineteenth  century  added  more  to  science 
than  all  preceding  time?  It  will  be  found  that  the  latest 
achievements  of  man  illuminate  his  path  of  progress  in 
remarkable  fashion,  and  enable  us  to  discern  the  promise 
of  the  wireless  telegraph  in  the  first  blaze  kindled  by  a 
savage,  to  understand  how  photography  in  natural  colours 
has  succeeded  to  the  first  rude  contours  drawn  by  the  hand 
of  man.  Throughout  the  volume  it  is  sought,  also,  to 
show  how  profoundly  recent  accessions  to  knowledge  are 
transforming  the  foundations  of  social,  political,  and  eco- 
nomic life,  while,  at  the  same  time,  they  are  correcting 
and  broadening  the  deepest  convictions  of  the  human 
soul. 

The  author  is  under  obligations  first  and  chiefly  to  John 
Fiske,  the  dean  of  American  evolutionists,  who  accorded  his 
generous  commendation  to  the  draft  of  this  volume  which 
he  read  in  the  summer  of  1899.     Other  indebtedness  is  ac- 

xiii 


xiv  PREFACE 

knowledged  in  the  course  of  the  book  ;  it  is  here  fitting  that 
grateful  thanks  should  be  rendered  to  the  revisers  whose 
names  follow,  acquitting  them  of  any  error  which  may  have 
entered  into  the  work  since  its  first  correction  at  their 
hands:  Mr.  J.  C.  Abel,  editor  Photographic  Times,  New 
York ;  Mr.  F.  H.  Badger,  city  electrician,  Montreal ;  Pro- 
fessor F.  W.  Clarke,  chemist  to  the  United  States  Geologi- 
cal Survey,  Washington;  Mr.  James  Douglas,  president 
Copper  Queen  Company,  New  York ;  Professor  C.  Han- 
ford  Henderson,  Pratt  Institute,  Brooklyn,  New  York ; 
Mr.  Walter  Hough,  United  States  National  Museum, 
Washington;  Mr.  Ernest  Ingersoll,  New  York;  Mr.  W.  D. 
Le  Sueur,  Ottawa,  Canada ;  Mr.  Edward  S.  Morse,  director, 
Peabody  Academy  of  Science,  Salem,  Massachusetts;  Mr. 
G.  F.  C.  Smillie,  engraver,  United  States  Bureau  of  Engrav- 
ing and  Printing,  Washington  ;  Mr.  T.  W.  Smillie,  chief  pho- 
tographer, United  States  National  Museum,  Washington ; 
and  Mr.  Edward  William  Thomson,  Boston,  Massachusetts. 
The  sources  of  several  illustrations  are  acknowledged  as 
they  appear;  other  obligations  are  as  follows:  From  the 
publishers  of  the  Electrical  World  and  Engineer,  New 
York  (from  their  Electrotechnical  Series,  edited  by  Pro- 
fessor E.  J.  Houston  and  Mr.  A.  E.  Kennelly),  Figs.  29, 
35.  37,  38,  40,  42,  55.  and  65;  from  Dr.  David  Gill, 
director  Royal  Observatory,  Cape  of  Good  Hope,  Plate 
XVI  ;  from  Mr.  Louis  Glass,  San  Francisco,  Plate  VI  ;  from 
Mr.  N.  H.  Heft,  New  Haven,  Fig.  53  ;  from  Professor  James 
E.  Keeler,  director  Lick  Observatory,  Mount  Hamilton, 
California,  Plate  XIX;  from  Professor  S.  P.  Langley, 
secretary  Smithsonian  Institution,  Washington,  Fig.  47 
and  Plate  XXI  ;  from  Professor  E  C.  Pickering,  direc- 
tor Harvard  Observatory,  Cambridge,  Massachusetts, 
the  spectrum  of  Beta  Aurigae,  part  of  Plate  XVII  (much 
reduced)  and  Plate  XVIII;  from  Mr.  T.  W.  Smillie,  chief 
photographer,  United  States  National  Museum,  Washington, 


PREFACE  xv 

Plate  VIII  (here  retouched)  and  Plates  VII  and  XV;  from 
the  Smithsonian  Institution,  Washington,  Figs.  1-6,  taken 
from  monographs  by  Mr.  Walter  Hough  in  the  series  of 
the  United  States  National  Museum ;  from  the  United 
States  Bureau  of  Ethnology,  Washington,  Figs.  8, 80,  and  8 1 . 

The  author  desires  to  remind  the  reader  that  "  the 
multiplication  of  effects,"  here  illustrated  with  details 
drawn  from  the  recent  progress  of  science,  forms  the  theme 
of  a  chapter  in  Herbert  Spencer's  First  Principles. 

The  main  argument  of  this  book  was  indicated  by  the 
author  in  the  Popular  Science  Monthly,  June,  1876.  Pro- 
fessor William  Stanley  Jevons,  author  of  The  Principles 
of  Science,  said  that  this  preliminary  statement  contained 
"  many  acute  and  profound  suggestions."  A  second  and 
fuller  outline  appeared  in  the  Popular  Science  Monthly, 
June,  1896. 

New  York,  March,  1900. 


CHAPTER   I 

INTRODUCTORY 

WITH  the  mastery  of  electricity  man  enters  upon  his 
first  real  sovereignty  of  nature.  As  we  hear  the 
whir  of  the  dynamo  or  listen  at  the  telephone,  as  we  turn 
the  button  of  an  incandescent  lamp  or 
travel  in  an  electromobile,  we  are  par-  a  New  Supremacy  and 
takers  in  a  revolution  more  swift  and 
profound  than  has  ever  before  been  en- 
acted upon  earth.  Until  the  nineteenth  century  fire  was 
justly  accounted  the  most  useful  and  versatile  servant  of 
man.  To-day  electricity  is  doing  all  that  fire  ever  did,  and 
doing  it  better,  while  it  accomplishes  uncounted  tasks  far 
beyond  the  reach  of  flame,  however  ingeniously  applied. 
We  may  thus  observe  under  our  eyes  just  such  an  impetus 
to  human  intelligence  and  power  as  when  fire  was  first  sub- 
dued to  the  purposes  of  man,  with  the  immense  advantage 
that,  whereas  the  subjugation  of  fire  demanded  ages  of 
weary  and  uncertain  experiment,  the  mastery  of  electricity 
is,  for  the  most  part,  the  assured  work  of  the  nineteenth 
century,  and,  in  truth,  very  largely  of  its  last  three  decades. 
The  triumphs  of  the  electrician  are  of  absorbing  interest  in 
themselves,  they  bear  a  higher  significance  to  the  student 
of  man  as  a  creature  who  has  gradually  come  to  be  what 
he  is.  In  tracing  the  new  horizons  won  by  electric  science 
and  art,  a  beam  of  light  falls  on  the  long  and  tortuous  paths 

i 


2  INTRODUCTORY 

by  which  man  rose  to  his  supremacy  long  before  the  drama 
of  human  life  had  found  a  singer  or  a  chronicler. 

Of  the  strides  taken  by  humanity  on  its  way  to  the  sum- 
mit of  terrestrial  life,  there  are  but  four  worthy  of  mention 
as  preparing  the  way  for  the  victories  of  the  electrician  — 
the  attainment  of  the  upright  attitude,  the  intentional 
kindling  of  fire,  the  maturing  of  emotional  cries  to  articu- 
late speech,  and  the  invention  of  written  symbols  for  speech. 
As  we  examine  electricity  in  its  fruitage  we  shall  find  that 
it  bears  the  unfailing  mark  of  every  other  decisive  factor  of 
human  advance:  its  mastery  is  no  mere  addition  to  the  re- 
sources of  the  race,  but  a  multiplier  of  them.  The  case  is 
not  as  when  an  explorer  discovers  a  plant  hitherto  un- 
known, such  as  Indian  corn,  which  takes  its  place  beside 
rice  and  wheat  as  a  new  food,  and  so  measures  a  service 
which  ends  there.  Nor  is  it  as  when  a  prospector  comes 
upon  a  new  metal,  such  as  nickel,  with  the  sole  effect  of 
increasing  the  variety  of  materials  from  which  a  smith 
may  fashion  a  hammer  or  a  blade.  Almost  infinitely 
higher  is  the  benefit  wrought  when  energy  in  its  most 
useful  phase  is,  for  the  first  time,  subjected  to  the  will 
of  man,  with  dawning  knowledge  of  its  unapproachable 
powers.  It  begins  at  once  to  marry  the  resources  of 
the  mechanic  and  the  chemist,  the  engineer  and  the  arti>t. 
with  issue  attested  by  all  its  own  fertility,  while  its  rays 
reveal  province  after  province  undreamed  of,  and  indeed 
unexisting,  before  its  advent. 

Every  other  primal  gift  of  man  rises  to  a  new  height  at 
the  bidding  of  the  electrician.  All  the  deftness  and  skill 
that  have  followed  from  the  upright  attitude,  in  its  creation 
of  the  human  hand,  have  been  brought  to  a  new  edge  and 
a  broader  range  through  electric  art.  Between  the  us< 
flame  and  electricity  have  sprung  up  alliances  which  have 
created  new  wealth  for  the  miner  and  the  metal-worker, 
the    manufacturer   and    the   shipmaster,  with    new   insights 


INTERLACEMENTS  3 

for  the  man  of  research.  Articulate  speech  borne  on  elec- 
tric waves  makes  itself  heard  half-way  across  America,  and 
words  reduced  to  the  symbols  of  symbols — expressed  in  the 
perforations  of  a  strip  of  paper — take  flight  through  a  tele- 
graph wire  at  twenty-fold  the  pace  of  speech.  Because 
the  latest  leap  in  knowledge  and  faculty  has  been  won  by 
the  electrician,  he  has  widened  the  scientific  outlook  vastly 
more  than  any  explorer  who  went  before.  Beyond  any 
predecessor,  he  began  with  a  better  equipment  and  a  larger 
capital  to  prove  the  gainfulness  which  ever  attends  the  ex- 
ploiting a  supreme  agent  of  discovery. 

As  we  trace  a  few  of  the  unending  interlacements  of 
electrical  science  and  art  with  other  sciences  and  arts,  and 
study  their  mutually  stimulating  effects,  we  shall  be  re- 
minded of  a  series  of  permutations  where  the  latest  of  the 
factors,  because  latest,  multiplies  all  prior  factors  in  an  un- 
exampled degree.1  We  shall  find  reason  to  believe  that 
this  is  not  merely  a  suggestive  analogy,  but  really  true  as 
a  tendency,  not  only  with  regard  to  man's  gains  by  the 
conquest  of  electricity,  but  also  with  respect  to  every  other 
signal  victory  which  has  brought  him  to  his  present  pin- 
nacle of  discernment  and  rule.  If  this  permutative  prin- 
ciple in  former  advances  lay  undetected,  it  stands  forth 
clearly  in  that  latest  accession  to  skill  and  interpretation 
which  has  been  ushered  in  by  Franklin  and  Volta,  Fara- 
day and  Henry. 


1  Permutations  are  the  various  ways  in  which  two  or  more  different  things 
may  be  arranged  in  a  row,  all  the  things  appearing  in  each  row.  Permutations 
are  readily  illustrated  with  squares  or  cubes  of  different  colours,  with  numbers, 
or  letters. 

Permutations  of  two  elements,  I  and  2,  are  (1x2)  two ;  I,  2 ;  2,  I  ;  or  a,  b; 
b,  a.  Of  three  elements  the  permutations  are  (1  x  2  x  3)  six ;  1,  2,  3  ;  1,  3,  2  ; 
2,  1,3;  2,  3,  1  :  3,  1,  2  ;  3,  2,  1  ;  or  a,  b,  c;  a,  r,  b;  b,  a,  c;  b,  c,  a;  c,  a,  b; 
1,  b,  a.  Of  four  elements  the  permutations  are  (1x2x3x4)  twenty-four ;  of 
five  elements,  one  hundred  and  twenty,  and  so  on.  A  new  element  or  permu- 
tator  multiplies  by  an  increasing  figure  all  the  permutations  it  finds. 


4  INTRODIXTORY 

Although  of  much  less   moment   than  the   triumphs   of 

the  electrician,  the  discovery  of  photography  ranks  second 

in  importance  among  the  scientific  feats 

Light  as  a  Limner.  of  the  nineteenth  century.  The  camera 
is  an  artificial  eye  with  almost  every 
power  of  the  human  retina,  and  with  many  that  are  denied 
to  vision — however  ingeniously  fortified  by  the  lens-maker. 
A  brief  outline  of  photographic  history  will  show  a  par- 
allel to  the  permutative  impulse  so  conspicuous  in  the 
progress  of  electricity.  At  the  points  where  the  elec- 
trician and  the  photographer  collaborate  we  shall  note 
achievements  such  as  only  the  loftiest  primal  powers  may 
evoke. 

A  brief  story  of  what  electricity  and  its  necessary  pre- 
cursor, fire,  have  done  and  promise  to  do  for  civilisation,  may 
have  attraction  in  itself;  so,  also,  may  a 

Permutative  Multi-        revjew       though      UlOSt      Clirsorv,      of     the 
plication  a   universal  ° 

Rule  of  Progress.  work  of  the  camera  and  all  that  led  up 
to  it :  for  the  provinces  here  are  as  wide 
as  art  and  science,  and  their  bounds  comprehend  well- 
nigh  the  entirety  of  human  exploits.  And  between  the 
lines  of  this  story  we  may  read  another — one  which  may 
tell  us  something  of  the  earliest  stumblings  in  the  dawn  of 
human  faculty.  When  we  compare  man  and  his  next  of 
kin,  we  find  between  the  two  a  great  gulf,  surely  the  widest 
betwixt  any  allied  families  in  nature.  Can  a  being  of  in- 
tellect, conscience,  and  aspiration  have  sprung  at  any  time. 
however  remote,  from  the  same  stock  as  the  orang  and  the 
chimpanzee?  Since  1859,  when  Darwin  published  his 
Origin  of  Species t  the  theory  of  evolution  has  become  so 
rally  accepted  that  to-day  it  is  little  more  assailed 
than  the  doctrine  of  gravitation.  And  yet,  while  the 
average  man  oi  intelligence  bows  to  the  formula  that 
all  which  now  exists  has  come  from  the  simplest  conceiv- 
able state  of  things, — a  universal  nebula,  it  you   will, — in 


PROGRESS   HAS   LEAPS  5 

his  secret  soul  he  makes  one  exception — himself.  That 
there  is  a  great  deal  more  assent  than  conviction  in  the 
world  is  a  chiding  which  may  come  as  justly  from  the 
teacher's  table  as  from  the  preacher's  pulpit.  Now,  if  we 
but  catch  the  meaning  of  man's  mastery  of  electricity,  we 
shall  have  light  upon  his  earlier  steps  as  a  fire-kindler,  and 
as  a  graver  of  pictures  and  symbols  on  bone  and  rock. 
As  we  thus  recede  from  civilisation  to  primeval  savagery, 
the  process  of  the  making  of  man  may  become  so  clear 
that  the  arguments  of  Darwin  shall  be  received  with 
conviction,  and  not  with  silent  repulse. 

As  we  proceed  to  recall,  one  by  one,  the  salient  chapters 
in  the  history  of  fire,  and  of  the  arts  of  depiction  that  fore- 
ran   the    camera,    we    shall    perceive    a 
truth    of   high    significance.       We    shall        Growth  is  slow, 

Efflorescence 

see  that,  while  every  new  faculty  has  its  jS  Rapid. 

roots  deep  in  older  powers,  and  while 
its  growth  may  have  been  going  on  for  age  after  age,  yet  its 
flowering  may  be  as  the  event  of  a  morning.  Even  as  our 
gardens  show  us  the  century-plants,  once  supposed  to  bloom 
only  at  the  end  of  a  hundred  years,  so  history,  in  the  large, 
exhibits  discoveries  whose  consequences  are  realised  only 
after  the  lapse  of  eons  instead  of  years.  The  arts  of  fire 
were  slowly  elaborated  until  man  had  produced  the  cruci- 
ble and  the  still,  through  which  his  labours  culminated  in 
metals  purified,  in  acids  vastly  more  corrosive  than  those 
of  vegetation,  in  glass  and  porcelain  equally  resistant  to 
flame  and  the  electric  wave.  These  were  combined  in  an 
hour  by  Volta  to  build  his  cell,  and  in  that  hour  began  a 
new  era  for  human  faculty  and  insight. 

It  is  commonly  imagined  that  the  progress  of  humanity 
has  been  at  a  tolerably  uniform  pace.  Our  review  of  that 
progress  will  show  that  here  and  there  in  its  course  have 
been  leaps,  as  radically  new  forces  have  been  brought 
under  the  dominion  of  man.      We  of  the  electric  revolu- 


6  INTRODl'CTORY 

tion  are  sharply  marked  off  from  our  great-grandfathers, 
who  looked  upon  the  cell  of  Volta  as  a  curious  toy. 
They,  in  their  turn,  were  profoundly  differenced  from  the 
men  of  the  seventeenth  century,  who  had  not  learned  that 
flame  could  outvie  the  horse  as  a  carrier,  and  grind  wheat 
better  than  the  mill  urged  by  the  breeze.  And  nothing 
short  of  an  abyss  stretches  between  these  men  and  their 
remote  ancestors,  who  had  not  found  a  way  to  warm  their 
frosted  fingers,  or  lengthen  with  lamp  or  candle  the  short, 
dark  days  of  winter. 

Throughout  the  pages  of  this  book  there  will  be  some 
recital  of  the  victories  won  by  the  fire-maker,  the  electri- 
cian, the  photographer,  and  many  more  in  the  peerage  of 
experiment  and  research.  Underlying  the  sketch  will  ap- 
pear the  significant  contrast  betwixt  accessions  of  minor 
and  of  supreme  dignity.  The  finding  a  new  wood,  such  as 
that  of  the  yew,  means  better  bows  for  the  archer,  stronger 
handles  for  the  tool-maker;  the  subjugation  of  a  universal 
force  such  as  fire,  or  electricity,  stands  for  the  exaltation 
of  power  in  every  field  of  toil,  for  the  creation  of  a  new 
earth  for  the  worker,  new  heavens  for  the  thinker.  As  a 
corollary,  we  shall  observe  that  an  increasing  width  of  gap 
marks  off  the  successive  stages  of  human  progress  from 
each  other,  so  that  its  latest  stride  is  much  the  longest  and 
most  decisive.  And  it  will  be  further  evident  that,  while 
every  new  faculty  is  of  age-long  derivation  from  older 
powers  and  ancient  aptitudes,  it  nevertheless  comes  to  the 
birth  in  a  moment,  as  it  were,  and  puts  a  strain  of  prob- 
ably fatal  severity  on  those  contestants  who  miss  the  new 
gift  by  however  little.  We  shall,  therefore,  find  that  the 
principle  of  permutation,  here  merely  indicated,  accounts 
in  large  measure  for  three  cardinal  facts  in  the  history  of 
man :  First,  his  leaps  forward  ;  second,  the  constant  ac- 
celerations in  these  leaps;  and  third,  the  gap  in  the  record 
of  the  tribes  which,  in  the  illimitable  past,  have  succumbed 


A    SUPPLANTER  7 

as  forces  of  a  new  edge  and  sweep  have  become  engaged 
in  the  fray.1 

The  interlacements  of  the  arts  of  fire  and  of  electricity 
are  intimate  and  pervasive.  While  many  of  the  uses  of 
flame  date  back  to  the  dawn  of  human  skill,  many  more 
have  come  to  new  and  higher  value  within  the  last  hundred 
years.  Fire  to-day  yields  motive  power  with  tenfold  the 
economy  of  a  hundred  years  ago,  and  motive  power  thus 
derived  is  the  main  source  of  modern  electric  currents.  In 
metallurgy  there  has  long  been  an  unwitting  preparation 
for  the  advent  of  the  electrician,  and  here  the  services  of 
fire  within  the  nineteenth  century  have  won  triumphs  upon 
which  the  later  successes  of  electricity  largely  proceed. 
In  producing  alloys,  and  in  the  singular  use  of  heat  to  effect 
its  own  banishment,  novel  and  radical  developments  have 
been  recorded  within  the  past  decade  or  two.  These,  also, 
make  easier  and  bolder  the  electrician's  tasks.  The  open- 
ing chapters  of  this  book  will,  therefore,  bestow  a  glance  at 
the  principal  uses  of  fire  as  these  have  been  revealed  and 
applied.  This  glance  will  make  clear  how  fire  and  elec- 
tricity supplement  each  other  with  new  and  remarkable 
gains,  while  in  other  fields,  not  less  important,  electricity  is 
nothing  else  than  a  supplanter  of  the  very  force  which 
made  possible  its  own  discovery  and  impressment. 

1  Some  years  ago  I  sent  an  outline  of  this  argument  to  Herbert  Spencer, 
who  replied  :  "I  recognise  a  novelty  and  value  in  your  inference  that  the  law 
implies  an  increasing  width  of  gap  between  lower  and  higher  types  as  evolu- 
tion advances." 


CHAPTER    II 

FLAME    AND    ITS    FIRST    USES 

ON   that    familiar   theme,   the    significance   of   common 
things,   a   word    may    still    be    spoken.       Nothing   is 
commoner,   nothing  is  more  necessary  to  civilisation,  than 

fire,  which  was  to  primitive  man  a  luxury 
Fire  To-day  and  of  oid.  both  costly  and  precarious.      There  may 

be  both  profit  and  interest  in  a  glance  at 
the  steps  which  join  the  fire-user  of  to-day  with  the  fire- 
user  of  old.      Let  us  begin  at  home. 

Upon  a  village  near  the  Hudson,  twenty  miles  from  New 
York,  dawn  is  slowly  breaking  in  early  winter.  From  the 
moment  when  a  match  is  struck  to  boil  the  tea-kettle  until, 
at  the  close  of  the  working-day,  the  evening  lamp  is  ex- 
tinguished, the  dependence  of  that  village  on  fire  is  so  con- 
stant that  life  can  hardly  be  imagined  without  it.  Were 
there  no  fire  there  could  be  no  soap  to  wash  with,  no  win- 
dow-pane to  reveal  the  threat  or  promise  of  the  morning 
sky,  no  rolls  nor  coffee,  neither  plate  nor  cup,  no  knife  and 
fork  for  bread  and  chop.  The  house  itself  is  born  of  fire. 
Its  furnace  for  heating  was  built  of  molten  iron;  its  smoke 
pours  into  a  chimney  whose  brick,  together  with  the  tiles  of 
the  hearth,  the  cement  of  the  cellar,  and  the  plaster  of  the 
walls,  came  out  of  diverse  naming  kilns.  Other  kilns  dried 
the  pine  and  cedar  for  the  outer  walls,  the  floors  and  roof; 
ever)-  plank  and  board  was  turned  out  cheaply  and  quickly 


CREATES   THE   HOME  9 

by  giant  saws,  all  furnace-driven.  From  smelted  ores  came 
the  boiler  of  copper,  the  water-pipe  of  lead,  the  gas-pipe 
of  iron,  the  bell-wires  of  steel,  with  every  nail,  hook,  and 
rivet  for  their  securing.  As  with  the  house,  so  with  its 
furnishings :  its  carpets  and  curtains,  as  well  as  the  clothing 
of  the  family,  were  made  by  harnessing  a  steam-engine  for 
the  business,  though  all  might  have  been  manually  carded, 
spun,  and  woven  from  the  sheep's  back  and  the  cotton-boll. 

A  railroad  train  for  the  metropolis  is  taken,  with  further 
indebtedness  to  fire.  Coal  glows  beneath  the  engine  boiler, 
while  flame  has  plainly  been  a  factor  in  all  that  surrounds 
the  passenger,  from  car-frame  to  window-screen,  from  the 
telegraph  wire  through  which  the  train  gets  orders,  to  the 
steel  rails  upon  which  it  is  swiftly  borne.  The  journey 
ends  in  a  city  plainly  dependent  upon  fire  at  every  turn — 
from  the  steel  building  going  up  by  the  aid  of  an  oil-engine, 
to  the  peddler's  tray  of  enamelled  badges,  which  repeat 
the  reds  and  blues  of  the  flames  that  painted  them. 

These  every-day  observations  might  be  multiplied  indefi- 
nitely ;  they  suggest  the  question,  Could  man  be  man 
without  fire?  Not  his  arts  of  life  only,  but  he  himself  has 
come  to  be  what  he  is  through  changes,  for  the  larger 
part  gradual,  during  uncounted  ages.  If  the  clock  of  time 
could  be  turned  back  for  millions  of  years,  we  should  see 
the  progenitors  of  mankind  the  brethren  of  the  brute,  be- 
cause tireless  as  the  brute  is  to-day.  In  so  far  as  the 
blurred  and  scanty  story  of  early  man  can  be  pieced  to- 
gether, it  tells  us  that  nothing  has  done  more  to  part  man 
from  his  lowly  kindred  than  his  acquired  mastery  of  flame. 

However  far  back  the  lineage  of  man-in-the-making 
may  be  traced,  we  are  obliged  to  think  of  him  as  begin- 
ning with  some  decided  superiority  to  his  kindred  of  the 
forest  and  the  plain.  His  advantage  may  have  lain  in 
keener  sight,  in  a  better  faculty  of  prehension,  or  in  that 
quickening  of  the  intelligence  which  has  its  spring  in  affec- 


io        FLAME   AND    ITS    FIRST    USES 

tion,  as  in  his  companion  the  dog.  Whatever  the  point  of 
departure  of  man  from  brute,  in  nothing  could  his  human 
quality  have  been  more  decisively  evinced  than  in  his  be- 
haviour toward  fire.  While  other  animals  looked  upon  a 
blaze  with  idle  allurement  or  stupid  fear,  he  had  sense 
enough  to  see  that  some  of  its  work  was  good ;  its  radiance 
in  wintry  air  was  sunlike  and  cordial,  its  half-burned  sticks 
were  tools  for  food-getting,  were  weapons  for  battle. 

Then,  as  now,  volcanoes  were  the  chief  sources  of  natural 
fire;  next  would  rank  oil-wells,  such  as  those  of  Baku 
on  the  Caspian  Sea,  which  in  historic  times  have  flamed 
or  smouldered  for  generations  together.  Many  minor 
agencies  were  less  uncommon — a  lightning-stroke  setting 
a  tree  ablaze,  a  meteorite  descending  on  withered  under- 
brush, a  globule  of  dew  or  balsam  focussing  a  sunbeam  on 
resinous  twigs,  a  storm  driving  the  stems  of  a  bamboo 
grove  against  each  other  until  sheer  friction  excited  flame. 
At  Bavispe,  in  Mexico,  an  earthquake  in  May,  1887,  was 
accompanied  by  devastating  fires ;  nearly  every  range  of 
hills  in  the  surrounding  country  had  its  trees  set  ablaze  by 
the  sparks  from  hard  stones  as  they  smote  against  each 
other  in  swift  descent.  The  beach-wrecked  carcass  of  a 
whale,  around  which  dead  leaves  and  straw  had  gathered, 
has  been  known  to  burst  into  fire,  a  type  of  many  a  case  of 
spontaneous  ignition  that  offered  man  the  golden  gift  of 
flame  when  he  knew  but  enough  to  enjoy  it  with  passive 
wonder.  As  he  would  watch  a  conflagration  lake  its  way 
through  a  clump  of  trees  or  a  stretch  of  dry  marsh,  he 
learned  much:  the  flame  was  here  sluggish,  there  fierce; 
one  bush  was  consumed  as  if  by  lightning,  another  in  dense 
smoke  and  slowly;  through  sun-parched  grass  and  under- 
woods ablaze  would  sometimes  sweep  so  fast  as  to  imprison 
deer  and  stifle  birds  —  the  incidental  baked  meats  not  with- 
out their  hint  of  cooking.  Then  came  the  action  which, 
simple  as  it  is,  has  never  been  observed  in  any  mere  brute 


THE   HAND   APPEARS  n 

— the  deliberate  adding  of  fuel  to  fire  so  as  to  prolong  its 
benefits.  Perhaps  this  was  done  in  pure  playfulness,  ex- 
cited by  the  enjoyment  of  seeing  the  sparkle  and  hearing 
the  crackle  of  the  flames;  but  it  presently  confirmed  the 
observation  that  the  pine  burns  better  than  the  redwood, 
that  the  hickory,  beech,  and  mesquite  yield  the  hottest  fire. 
But  to  what  prior  advantage  was  this  early  man  beholden 
for  intelligence  already  distinctly  human?  The  answer  is 
that  for  ages  his  brain  had  been  informed 
and  strengthened  by  his  hand.  Yet  me-  The  Upright  Attitude, 
chanical  skill  was  no  monopoly  of  his ; 
birds  could,  with  bill  and  feet,  all  but  manipulate  twigs, 
moss,  leaves,  and  fibre  for  their  nests,  or  carve  out  of  wood 
and  earth  receptacles  for  their  eggs;  elephants  could  tear 
from  trees  boughs  long  enough  to  wield  with  their  trunks 
and  scratch  leeches  from  their  sides ;  monkeys,  rending 
branches  in  quest  of  nuts  and  fruit,  could  on  occasion  throw 
them  as  missiles,  and  had  learned  to  dispose  these  branches 
for  rude  shelter  from  wind  and  rain.  Here  already  was  the 
significant  heightening  of  bodily  powers  by  the  seizure  and 
use  of  things  outside  the  body.  A  stick  made  the  brute's 
arm  longer,  a  stone  made  deadly  a  blow  from  his  fist ;  in 
external  aids  so  simple  lay  the  germ  of  all  mechanic  art. 
How  was  it  that  man  had  already  become  the  one  devel- 
oper of  that  art?  Because  he  had  acquired  the  upright 
attitude  long  before  the  days  we  are  trying  to  recall. 
When  his  upper  limbs  had  become  arms  and  hands,  freed 
from  the  drudgery  of  locomotion,  his  long  fingers  and  op- 
posable thumbs  had  learned  many  an  aptitude  denied  the 
elephant's  trunk  or  the  gorilla's  paw.  And  every  gain  in 
skill  and  deftness  did  its  best  work  in  enlarging  and  clari- 
fying his  brain  as  a  thinking  instrument.1 

1  Dr.  William  Munro  treats  "The  Relation  between  the  Erect  Posture  and 
the  Physical  and  Intellectual  Development  of  Man,"  in  his  Prehistoric 
Problems.      W.  Blackwood  &  Sons,  Edinburgh  and  London,  1897. 


12        FLAME  AND    ITS    FIRST    USES 

If  we  assume,  in  retracing  the  first  steps  of   man,  that 

the  thing  easiest  to  do  was  the  thing  first  done,  he  began 

by  dashing  against  a  stone  whatever  he 

observation  and  Ex-     wished  to  break;  then  he  took  from  the 

penment.  ground   sticks    and    stones   and    grasped 

them   for   new  convenience   and   effect ; 

afterward,  when  even  the  best  that  lie  could  find  were  not 

what  he  wanted,  he  passed  to  the  breaking,  or  biting,  or 

rubbing,  or  grinding  of  branches,   boulders,   pebbles   into 

such  shapes  as  he  desired.      Whenever  he,  being  near   to 

natural  fire,  acted   on  the  impulse,  born  of   curiosity  and 

dexterity,  to  put  stick  and  stone  in  the  flame,  at  first  with 

the  equal  hope  that  both  would  burn,  he  crossed  another 

of  the  bridges  over  which  no  brute  has  ever  had  the  wit  to 

follow  him.      He  passed  from  the  field  of  mechanics  to  the 

higher  walk  of  chemistry.      He  had  long  been  able  to  alter 

the  shape  of  an  object;  he  now  gained  power  to  change  its 

substance  as  well. 

He  found  that  the  stoutest  staffs,  held  over  the  fire,  soon 
turned  black,  lost  their  strength,  and  could  be  shaken  to 
fragments  with  the  slightest  blow.  He  learned  that  some 
of  the  hardest  stones,  the  granites,  were  split  by  flame — 
to  this  day  the  quarrymen  of  southern  India  part  their 
granite  blocks  with  fire.  He  discovered  that  limestones 
crumbled  as  they  changed  their  hue  to  white;  that  sand- 
stones stood  unscathed,  however  furious  the  heat  that  bathed 
them.  It  was  by  such  resistance  to  fire,  as  well  as  by  its 
close  texture,  that  soapstone  recommended  itself  to  the 
Eskimos  as  the  material  for  their  lain] is.  Primitive  man 
observed,  too,  that  the  clay  or  sand  on  which  his  fire  was 
oftenest  laid  remained  unconsumed.  As  his  brain  grew 
more  perceptive,  he  noticed  that  sometimes,  where  lire  had 
scorched  the  ground,  plants  afterward  bloomed  with  rare 
luxuriance — a  useful  hint  when  he  came  to  be  a  deliberate 
planter  and  cultivator  of  the  soil.      We  may  well  suppose 


THE   GUARDING    OF   FIRE  13 

that  one  of  his  first  cosmetics  was  the  soot  from  oily  fuel, 
that  the  biting  quality  of  water  mixed  with  ashes  was  re- 
marked early  in  the  day  of  fire-using.  Thus  began  the 
art  of  making  many  substances  rare  or  quite  unknown  before, 
each  discovery  raising  curiosity  and  dexterity  to  a  new 
pitch.  In  the  long  afternoons  of  savage  leisure,  uncounted 
random  observations,  or  even  experiments,  served  to  im- 
plant the  vague  faith  in  transmutation  which  later  kindled 
the  hopes  of  alchemy.  How  strangely  were  leaf  and  flower, 
twig  and  root,  changed  in  colour  and  quality  at  the  touch 
of  fire !  What  was  to  prevent  their  returning  as  mysteri- 
ously as  they  had  vanished  in  a  blaze? 

The  more  use  and  interest  man  found  in  fire,  the  more 
anxious  he  became  to  maintain  it  as  long  as  he  could. 
Fuel  might  be  scarce ;  to  seek  and  fetch  it  long  distances 
might  be  an  arduous  enterprise ;  hence  unremitting  care 
was  taken  to  preserve  embers  under  cloaks  of  sand,  or 
earth,  or  what  not,  none  of  them  better  than  their  own 
ashes  well  pressed  down.  Such  cloaks  were  of  peculiar 
value  when  fire  had  to  be  carried  from  place  to  place,  for 
they  at  once  protected  it  from  exhaustion  and  made  its 
carriage  safe  and  easy.  When  Europeans  first  touched  at 
the  Andaman  Islands  they  found  the  natives  able  to  pre- 
serve fire,  but  ignorant  of  how  to  create  it.  The  arts  of 
maintaining  and  transporting  fire  were  practised  so  long, 
and  under  so  grievous  penalty,  that  we  find  flame  faith- 
fully perpetuated  on  the  altars  of  religion  to  this  day.  The 
Damaras  and  Andamanese  still  guard  their  tribal  blaze  in 
communal  huts,  as  the  Romans  did  in  their  temples  two 
thousand  years  ago. 

As  primitive  man  ate  in  the  warmth  of  his  fire,  he  would 
sometimes  throw  into  it  bones,  or  the  surplus  fat  of  birds, 
beasts,  or  fish,  and  so  become  acquainted  with  a  fiercer  fuel 
than  wood,  one  melting  at  times  into  oil,  which  he  saw 
burning   with   much  light.      To    burn   fat   by    itself    would 


14         FLAME   AND   ITS    FIRST    USES 

mark  a  further  stage  of  discovery,  and  so  came  the  first 
lamp,  such  as  flares  to-night  in  the  cabins  of  the  Tennessee 
mountains.  From  deliberately  using  fat  and  its  oil  for 
fuel,  there  would  be  an  easy  transition  to  trying  how  other 
oil-like  things  would  burn.  In  many  places  petroleum 
oozed  to  the  surface  of  ponds  and  creeks,  proffering  fuel 
by  the  use  of  which  man's  ideas  would  again  be  enlarged. 
Familiar  with  the  fact  that  some  things  would  give  out 
heat  and  light,  he  would,  in  lack  of  such  things,  or  from 
sheer  curiosity,  try  the  effect  of  setting  fire  to  any  new 
substance  he  might  find.  And  so,  in  the  range  of  his 
attempts,  he  found  that  peat,  lignite,  and  coal  from  seams 
appearing  on  the  surface  of  the  ground,  could  be  added  to 
his  store  of  fuels;  and  in  the  procuring  of  all  these  he 
would  make  and  use  new  tools — with  further  expansion  of 
his  intelligence.  Thus  clearly  did  fire  endow  early  man 
with  faculties  and  facilities  for  tasks  impossible  before; 
bestow  upon  him  the  beginnings  of  comfort  and  cheer; 
enable  him  to  set  out  so  fast,  to  separate,  finally,  so  far  from 
his  cousinry  of  the  glade  and  thicket,  that,  until  Darwin 
lifted  the  veil,  their  family  tie  lay  unrevealed. 

In  all  the  early  enjoyment  of  flame,  fear  was  mingled. 
A  gust  of  wind,  a  sudden  shower,  could  put  the  blaze  to 

flight,  and  the  log,  or  coal,  or  peat,  how- 
Fire  Kindled  Artificially,  ever  faithfully  tended,  would  sink  at  last 

to  ashes.  With  keen  intelligence,  in- 
debted to  the  lessons  of  fire,  a  man  may  be  imagined  say- 
ing to  himself,  in  some  region  of  frosty  winters:  "What 
if  I  could  summon  fire  when  I  chose,  instead  of  trying 
with  such  pains  to  keep  it  alive?  When  flame  goes  out, 
ii  nol  go  somewhere  whence  I  may  recall  it?"  How 
tli*-  wistful  question  prompted  its  answer  is  clear.  In 
rubbing  or  grinding  a  bit  of  wood  into  shape  for  tool 
or  weapon  it  j^rew  warm  to  the  man's  touch;  when  his 
hand  was  heavy  and  quick,  the  dull  heat  of  friction  began 


FIRE   CREATED   AT    LAST 


*5 


to  pass  into  something  higher;  still  he  persisted,  now  in 
wondrous  hope,  and  saw  the  scorching  and  burning  wood 
burst  into  flame.  The  blaze,  tiny  and  shrinking  as  it  was, 
had  doubtless  often  shown  itself  before,  but  this  time  it 
was  aroused  by  a  savage  with 
wit  enough  to  feed  it  with 
crumbled  moss  or  broken 
bark,  and  repeat  its  weird 
creation.  When,  as  in  the 
modern  practice,  a  stick  was 
swiftly  turned  in  a  slot,  un- 
der steady  pressure,  a  tiny 
cone  of  dust  would  slowly 
gather,  smoulder  for  a  few 
moments,  and  then  spring 
into  a  blaze  (Fig.   1). 

Stones  as  well  as  sticks  were 
part  of  the  stock  in  trade  of 
primitive  man,  and  much 
pains  did  he  lavish  on  his  flint 
knives  and  arrows.  The  modern  Eskimo,  almost  destitute 
of  wood  and  metal,  works  wonders  with  the  bone,  the  hide, 
and  the  sinews  of  the  seal ;  so  with  the  men  of  the  stone 
age,  their  ingenuity  in  shaping  their  axes,  hammers,  and 
chisels  is  fairly  astonishing.  Nor  was  ornament  neglected. 
Professor  Petrie  has  discovered  in  Egypt  ancient  imple- 
ments worthy  to  be  credited  to  a  primitive  jeweller,  so 
delicate  is  their  decoration.  Flint  is  found  in  many  widely 
scattered  chalk-beds.  In  striking  one  piece  of  it  upon 
another  to  shape  the  edge  of  a  weapon  or  a  tool,  the  stone 
shot  out  sparks,  just  as  an  old-fashioned  strike-a-light  does 
now  (Fig.  2).  At  a  moment  memorable  in  human  fortunes, 
some  of  these  sparks  fell  upon  dried  leaves,  sun-cracked 
pith,  or  some  such  fluffy  combustible  as  a  cotton- boll  or  the 
catkin  of  an  arctic   willow.      A   blaze  was  born,  as   many 


Fig.  1. 

Making  fire.      Hupa  Indians,  Cali- 
fornia.    U.  S.  National  Museum. 


i6 


FLAME   AND    ITS    FIRST    USES 


another  had  been  born  before  ;  but  this  time,  as  with  the  twin 
flame  from  wood,  it  caught  the  eye  of  a  man  capable  of  that 
faithful  imitation  of  nature  in  which  rests  the  master}-  oi 

her.  To  this  hour  the 
spark  from  flint  shares  with 
the  flame  from  wood  the 
whole  field  of  winning  fire 
by  primitive  means.  No 
piecemeal  acquisition  this, 
like  learning  to  hit  a  mark 
with  stone  or  bolt.  The 
dexterity  which  led  up  to 
fire-making  may  have  been 
gained  by  a  succession  of 
minute  steps,  each  sepa- 
rated from  the  next  by  a 
difference  scarcely  percep- 
tible;  but  when  dexterity 
rose  to  the  height  of  kin- 
dling a  blaze,  it  opened  on 
that  instant  a  door  to  a 
whole  universe  of  power  beyond  the  reach  of  the  hand 
of  man,  however  skilled,  if  tireless. 

As  fire  passed   from  its  various  birthplaces  to  one  new 

zone  of  the  world  after  another,   manifold  trials  disclosed 

which  woods  were  easiest  to  kindle.     The 

The  First  Lessons  of    Cottonwood  in  its  crumbling  fibre  proved 

Kindled  Fire.  the  best ;  the  yew,  afterward  adopted  for 

the  bow,  was  an  excellent   fire-bringer ; 

in  what  are  now  the  Southwestern   Stairs  of  the   Union, 

the  stalk  of  yucca  and  agave   were  employed   with  equal 

success.      The  dried    n.ot    of    the    cottonwood    is    used    to 

this  day  by  the   Moqui  Indian-   because  even  better  than 

its  stem       As  tinder  for  the  fleeting  spark  from  flint,  dried 

fungi  and  frayed  bark  of  many  shrubs  and  tree-  approved 


Fin.  2. 

Strike-a-light  in  Use.      U.  S.  National 

Museum. 


THE   FIRE-DRILL 


l7 


themselves,  every  region  rewarding  the  seeker  with  its 
peculiar  supply,  generally  abundant.  In  this  service  the 
touchwood  earned  its  name ;  the  cones  of  larch  and  pine, 
when  slightly  charred,  were  efficient  in  an  uncommon 
degree. 

In  the  use  of  all  these  aids  there  was  wide  diversity  of 
skill.  Fire-getting  by  the  friction  of  wood  to  this  day 
costs  the  Ainos  more  than  two  hours'  severe  labor.  In 
other  tribes  this  drudgery  was  long  ago  abridged  by  bor- 
rowing a  tool  from  a  sister  art.  A  common  task  for  the 
primitive  artisan  was  boring  holes  in  wood,  or  stone,  or 
shell,  with  sharp  flints  whose  tapering  contour  foretold  both 
awl  and  chisel.  By  and  by  these  rude  perforators  were 
improved  in  form,  and  turned  with  thongs  and  sinews; 
through  point  thus  meeting  point  instead  of  rambling  over 
an  extended  sur- 
face, the  heat  was 
heightened  and 
flame  quickly  won. 
The  drill,  in  its  first 
estate  but  an  au- 
ger, has gone round 
the  world  an  effec- 
tive fire-maker  as 
well  (Fig.  3).  Its 
wielder  need  un- 
dertake no  search 
for  special  kinds  of 
wood,  nor  is  it 
necessary  that  his 
wood  be  dry ;  in- 
deed, Zuni  priests, 
to  do  their  gods  the  more  honour,  were  wont  to  moisten  the 
tree  whence  they  drew  the  sacrificial  blaze.  Some  savage 
tribes  familiar  with  the  fire-drill  seldom  use  it ;  the  Apaches 


Fig.  3 

Iroquois  pump-drill  for    making    fire.    Onondaga 

Indians,  Canada.     U.  S.  National  Museum. 


i8 


FLAME    AND    ITS    FIRST    USES 


have   so   much   knack   in   twirling  two   simple  sticks  as  to 
educe  fire  in  but  eight  seconds. 

Nature    in    showering    hints    upon    inventors    has    not 
neglected   the   fire-maker.      A    suggestion    for   an   original 

mode  of   fire-making   may  have   lain   in 

Fire-kindiing  by  Mod-    watching  bamboo   stems   driven  against 

em  savages.  each  other  in  a  storm  until  flame  issued 

from  their  rasping  friction.  In  the  Malay 
Archipelago,  says  Alfred  Russel  Wallace,  two  pieces  of 
stem  are  used  to  kindle  fire;  a  sharp-edged  piece  like  a 
knife  is  rubbed  across  a  convex  piece  in  which  a  notch  is 


jdfek.: 

Fig.  4. 
Fire-making  by  sawing.     Burmese  and  Malay  method. 

cut,  nearly  severing  the  bamboo;  after  sawing  across  for  a 
while,  the  wood  is  pierced,  and  the  heated  particles  tall 
below  and  ignite  (Fig.  4).  The  Ternate  Malays  and  the 
Tungaras  of  British  North  Borneo  have  improved  upon 
this  by  striking  a  piece  of  china  and  a  bit  of  tinder  against 
the  outside  of  a  piece  of  bamboo,  whose  silicious  covering 
yields  a  spark.  The  Pacific  Islanders  and  the  Negritos  of 
New  Britain  make  fire  on  yel  another  plan — by  plough- 
ing. They  rub  a  sharpened  piece  of  hard  stick  against 
the  inside  of  a  bit  of  dried  split  bamboo.      This  produces  a 


MEMORIES    WHICH   REMAIN 


l9 


fine  dust  which  soon  ignites.  The  flame  is  fed  with  grass. 
Thus  everywhere  has  acquaintance  with  the  uses  of  fire  set 
man  to  inventing  means  of  creating  it,  while  the  process  of 
invention  has  made  him  familiar  with  new  materials  and 
expedients,  all  with  the  effect  of  enlarging  his  knowledge, 
of  promoting  the  strength  and  flexibility  of  his  mind. 

From  its  quickness  and  convenience  the  flint  method  of 
fire-making  had  only  to  be  discovered,  or  borrowed,  to 
supersede  at  once  the  friction- stick  or  the  drill.  With  the 
conservatism  characteristic  of  religion,  the  older  plan  still 
lingers  at  the  altar.  Professor  Romeyn  Hitchcock  says 
{United  States  National  Museum  Report,  1887-88,  p.  552): 

The  fire-drill  is  used  at  the  festivals  of  the  Oyashiro  to  produce  fire 
for  use  in  cooking  the  food  offered  to  the  gods.  Until  the  temple  was 
examined  officially  in  1872,  the  head  priest  used  it  for  preparing  his 
private  meals  at  all  times.  Since  then  it  has  been  used  only  at  festivals 
and  in  the  head  priest's  house  on  the  eve  of  festivals,  when  he  purifies 
himself  for  their  celebration  in  the  Imbidous,  or  room  for  preparing  holy 
fire,  where  he  makes  the  fire  and  prepares  the  food. 

Among  the  Sacs  and  Foxes,  the  juniors  resort  to  the 
white  man's  matches,  the  seniors  light  their  pipes  with  flint 
and  steel  (Fig.  5),  while  the 
priests  still  use  the  bow-drill. 
The  Roman  Catholic  Church, 
in  its  blessing  of  the  new  fire 
on  Easter  even,  carries  us  back 
yet  farther  than  to  the  bow- 
drill.  The  officiating  priest  is 
required  to  strike  the  spark  from 
a  stone. 

A  long  and  weary  path,  with 
many  a  twist  and  turning, 
stretches  between  the  men  who 
first  lighted  a  fire  with  flint  or 
friction-stick  and  the  men  of  to-day  who  strike  the  cheap 
phosphorus   match — perfected  as   recently   as    1840.     The 


Fig    5. 

Flint  and  steel.     Otoe  Tndians. 

Kansas  and  Nebraska. 

U.  S.  National  Museum. 


20         FLAME   AND    ITS    FIRST    USES 

later  steps  in  that  path  have  been  taken  through  finding 
substances  more  and  more  combustible  —  first  of  all,  the 
lighter  and  more  resinous  woods;  then,  sulphur;  and  last 
of  all,  phosphorus.  The  shred  of  pine  in  the  friction-match 
remains  as  a  relic  of  the  fire-stick  of  the  cave-dwellers;  it 
recalls  the  day  when  our  lowly  ancestors  first  dared  to 
mimic  the  sun  in  an  artificial  beam  of  warmth  and  light. 
And  there  is  more  than  the  match-stick  at  hand  to  remind 
us,  in  the  midst  of  gas-jets  and  electric  lamps,  how  the  first 
gropings  to  both  were  assured.  In  the  English  villa 
Brandon,  on  the  Little  Ouse,  thirty  miles  from  Cambridge, 
flints  are  still  being  made  by  knappers  of  an  expertness 
such  as  comes  only  'by  inheritance  —  in  this  case,  from  im- 
memorial times.  Many  of  the  flints  are  still  struck  off  in 
forms  closely  resembling  those  of  the  early  stone  age.1 

A  century  ago  Cuvier  and  his  school  gave  classic  form 
to   the   catastrophic  view   of    nature;    they    traced    in    the 

world  of  fossil  remains  abrupt  entrances 

a  Pace  Quickened  to   and  exits  ;   in  man\'  strata  of  the  globe, 

a  Leap'  whether  fossil-bearing  or  not,  they  saw 

the  work  of  earthquake  and  volcano. 
What  inference  better  warranted,  at  that  time  of  compara- 
tively little  knowledge,  than  that  species  had  been  created  as 
if  by  instantaneous  fiat?  From  this  view  many  naturalists 
of  to-day  have  recoiled  so  far  that  they  never  tire  of  re- 
peating that  nature  knows  no  haps,  no  sudden  changes. 

But  let  us  recall  the  day  when  the  sea  first  washed  its 
way  across  the  ridge  that  ran  from  Africa  to  Gibraltar.  The 
preparation  for  that  momentous  day,  the  slow  encroach- 
ment of  the  Mediterranean  on  this  strip  of  land,  had  OCCU- 

1  Mi.  William  Carter,  a  Hint-maker  at  Brandon,  writes  (May  6,  iS 
"  There  arc  now  eighteen  flint-makers  al  work  here,  each  "I  whom  makes  two 
thousand  flints  a  day.  The  markets  are  scattered  throughout  Africa,  China, 
India,  Afghanistan,  Persia,  Russia,  Turkey,  Norway,  and  Sweden,  where  the 
Hints  are  used  chiefly  for  guns.  In  Spain  they  arc  mainly  wanted  for  strike- 
lights." 


NEW    BIRTHS    OF    TIME  21 

pied  ages.  In  all  probability,  the  rising  of  a  storm  of 
uncommon  violence  in  a  few  minutes  broke  down  the  sub- 
siding barrier  at  its  weakest  point.  Then  speedily  followed 
consequences  of  life  and  death  to  myriads  of  creatures ; 
uncounted  species  of  molluscs  and  fish  were  able  to  find 
new  prey,  while  their  victims  were  attacked  by  new  foes 
too  formidable  to  be  resisted.  As  the  gap  between  shore 
and  shore  grew  broader,  it  yawned  at  last  too  widely  for 
even  the  most  daring  swimmers ;  carnivorous  beasts,  thus 
shut  in  to  either  Europe  or  Africa,  were  exposed  to  un- 
wonted stresses,  while  their  maraudings,  now  limited,  left 
their  former  prey  on  the  opposite  coast  less  harried  and 
insecure. 

The  volcano,  much  more  thoroughly  studied  now  than  in 
Cuvier's  day,  has  the  same  teaching  as  the  sea;  the  Sand- 
wich Islands  may  stand  as  a  type  of  its  creations.  For 
ages  a  huge  caldron  beneath  the  Pacific  was  busy  pushing 
up  its  cubic  leagues  of  rock  and  earth.  One  moment  this 
mass  was  below  the  wave,  the  next  it  had  emerged  to  air 
and  sunshine.  Now  birds  and  insects  began  to  alight  upon 
it ;  spores  and  seeds  conveyed  by  them  could  give  birth 
to  ferns,  shrubs,  and  trees ;  possibilities  of  life  entirely  new 
arrived  with  its  simple  lift  from  the  deep.  The  life  histo- 
ries of  both  insects  and  birds  confirm  the  view  that  the  pace 
of  progress  may  on  occasion  hasten  to  a  leap.  Let  us  note 
what  follows  as  soon  as  insects  begin  to  supplant  the  winds 
at  the  business  of  fertilising  flowers.  Flies  and  moths 
come  to  a  blossom,  attracted  by  its  nectar;  their  surfaces 
while  they  feed  are  brushed  by  pollen ;  away  they  sail  to 
other  flowers  and  tie  a  marriage  knot  with  a  directness 
and  efficacy  denied  to  the  aimless  air.  Thus,  simply 
through  having  exteriors  which  easily  catch  dust,  insects 
of  the  narrowest  intelligence  unknowingly  become  the 
painters,  sculptors,  and  perfumers  of  unnumbered  varieties 
of    blossoms.       A    revolution    not    less     remarkable    was 


22  FLAME   AND    ITS    FIRST    USES 

wrought  when  birds  first  appeared  upon  earth.  In  all 
likelihood  it  was  in  perfecting  the  feathered  wing  that 
their  emergence  from  reptilian  stock  took  place.  Even 
the  beginnings  of  flight,  accompanied  by  the  heat-retain- 
ing raiment  of  feathers,  would  have  decisive  value.  The 
realm  of  the  air  with  its  possibilities  of  escape  from  ene- 
mies, its  new  sources  of  food,  its  new  breadths  of  climate, 
stretched  itself  before  the  incipient  bird.  In  the  struggle 
for  life  the  developing  faculty  of  flight  was  the  resource 
more  vital  than  any  other,  and  therefore  the  power  most 
likely  to  survive  in  every  favouring  variation,  with  the  effect 
of  shortening  the  period  of  transition  to  the  new  kingdom. 

Not  less  significant  are  the  "  sports  "  of  the  botanist,  of 
the  breeder  of  sheep  and  cattle.  The  Concord  grape,  seized 
upon  for  its  excellence  by  Mr.  Ephraim  \V.  Hull ;  the  an- 
con  sheep,  so  short-legged  that  fences  could  be  safely  low- 
ered ;  the  hornless  bull  of  Paraguay,  so  much  more  tractable 
than  his  sire,  all  appeared  abruptly  from  ordinary  stock, 
and  transmitted  their  characteristics  as  fully  as  do  com- 
mon fruits,  sheep,  and  cattle.  The  truth  seems  to  be  that 
nature  for  long  periods  and  wide  areas  may  move  with  slow 
and  steady  pace,  as  if  gathering  her  strength  and  catching 
her  breath  ;  then,  as  in  the  twinkling  that  divides  cloud  from 
snow,  or  a  drop  of  water  from  its  gaseous  elements,  the  mi- 
crometer method  ceases  to  apply,  change  in  degree  be- 
comes exalted  into  a  change  of  kind,  and  gestation  yields 
a  life  so  different  from  the  parent  form  as  to  seem  a  new 
creation. 

Man  possessing  only  such  fire  as  nature  gave  him,  and 
man  creating  a  blaze  at  will,  are  separated  by  all  the  dis- 
tance between  mere  warmth  and  vivid  flame,  between 
mechanics  alone  and  mechanics  plus  chemistry.  Those 
heroes  of  invention,  whoever  they  were,  who  fust  kindled 
flame,  did  more  for  human  weal  than  any  of  their  succes- 
sors in  the  hierarchy  of  creative  power,  for   it  was  their 


THE    OFFSPRING    OF    FIRE  23 

triumph  that  made  possible  every  other.  As  we  shall  see 
when  we  come  to  consider  the  subjugation  of  electricity,  it 
has  illustrated  once  again  this  swift  maturing  of  an  acces- 
sion to  the  supreme  resources  of  man.  Dexterity  in  one 
decisive  epoch  flowered  into  the  mastery  of  fire ;  the  fruit- 
age of  fire  made  possible  the  harnessing  within  a  single 
century  a  force  as  weighty  as  itself  with  benefits  for  man- 
kind. 


CHAPTER    III 


THE    FIRST    GAINS    FROM    KINDLED    FLAME 


INCALCULABLE  were  the  gains  that  began  to  flow  in 
upon  the  first  fire-maker,  his  victory  won,  its  spoils  as- 
sured.    Beneath  his  tread  the  globe  expanded  itself  with 
imitation,  for  now  no  longer  chained  by- 
New  Horizons  for  the    the   sunbeam,   he   added   all   the   frozen 
Fire-maker.         North  tQ  hjs  hunting-ground.     The  Es- 

kimos,  according  to  Professor  Dawkins, 
are  the  lineal  descendants  of  the  cavemen.  They  are  the 
only  American  aborigines  who  have  invented  a  lamp;  that 
simple  device  has  enabled  them  to  conquer  and  hold  an 
outpost  twenty  degrees  nearer  the  pole  than  any  other 
human   settlement  (Eig.  6).     Whether  the  first  explorers 

had  caves  to  fall  back  upon 
or    not,    fire  was  indispen- 
sable to  them.      A  burning 
brand    cleared    their    paths 
through    forests    otherwise 
impenetrable.      When   they 
singled  out  a  tree  for  their 
rude   carpentry,    it   was    no 
longer    cut    down    by   flints  so  soon  dulled  and   broken   in 
the  process.      Fire   cunningly   applied,  to  be  as  cunningly 
quenched  with  wet  mud,  had  a  sharper  and  quicker  tooth 

24 


Fig.  6. 

Eskimo  lamp  from  Mackenzie  River. 

U.  S.  National  Museum. 


DAY    LENGTHENED  25 

than  stone.  The  tree  felled,  its  trunk  was  softened  and 
shaped,  again  by  fire,  into  a  canoe  for  voyages  too  daring 
for  any  raft. 

Yet  worthier  service  lay  in  lifting  the  dreary  pall  of 
night.  Until  the  savage  could  command  fire  the  clouded 
evening  sky  left  him  as  if  sightless  for  toil,  for  sport,  for 
escape  from  ravening  beasts  and  sudden  tempests.  If  his 
feet  found  a  beaten  path,  it  was  easy  to  stray  from  it  in 
darkness,  perchance  to  pay  the  penalty  with  his  life.  His 
lowly  hearth,  heaped  with  crackling  boughs,  cheered  even 
more  with  its  light  than  with  its  warmth.  It  drew  to  its 
rays  the  industries  of  flint  and  needle ;  its  fitful  beam 
created  man's  first  home.  What  artificial  light  means  as 
an  educator  we  can  see  in  a  modern  instance.  The  French 
Canadian  habitant  forty  years  ago  had  nothing  better  than 
a  flickering,  malodorous  grease-bowl,  which  hung  over  his 
table  from  a  notched  stick.  To-day  he  has  a  lamp  of  kero- 
sene, cheap  and  brilliant,  with  its  invitation  to  reading  and 
study. 

From  the  moment  when  fire  first  glowed  within  the  walls 
of  a  dwelling,  however  lowly,  it  began  to  exert  an  influence 
upon  architecture  which  persists  to  the  present  hour.  Let 
a  Western  mining  village  be  swept  by  flames,  and  although 
its  shanties  date  back  only  a  few  months,  their  chimneys 
stand  unhurt  to  say,  "  Build  all  as  soundly  as  you  build  us." 
Fire  makes  demands  for  permanence  and  solidity  which  are 
disregarded  at  the  occupier's  peril,  at  the  nation's  loss. 
Fire  in  ancient  times  had  a  dignifying  effect  on  the  build- 
ings designed  to  guard  the  communal  flame  at  which  any 
one  might  light  his  brand  and  take  it  home.  These  central 
and  labour-saving  fires,  as  years  went  by,  took  on  religious 
associations.  It  is  plausibly  argued  that  as  home  is  chiefly 
the  creation  of  fire,  so  also  is  the  rearing  of  temples  for 
worship,  such  as  those  of  Vesta  in  old  Rome,  or  of  the 
modern  Parsees  in  Bombay. 


26     FIRST  GAINS  FROM   KINDLED  FLAME 

Thus  did  flame  requite  its  maker  by  multiplying  his 
opportunities  as  an  explorer,  by  broadening  the  zones  in 
which  he  might  choose  a  dwelling-place, 
cooking.  by  giving  him  security  and  comfort,  and 

by  so  eliciting  his  skill  that  that  larger 
outer  garment — a  house — might  begin  to  be  rudely  fash- 
ioned from  its  prototypes,  the  cavern  and  the  tree.  Fire 
meant  more  space  to  live  in,  more  time  to  work  and  play 
in,  and  better  shelter ;  it  also  stood  for  more  and  better  food. 
The  spoils  of  the  hunter  or  the  fisherman  broiled  or  roasted 
became  more  digestible,  or,  as  pemmican,  could  be  longer 
stored  to  abridge  the  see-saw  betwixt  plenty  and  want. 
When  it  was  remarked  how  readily  hot  stones  imparted 
their  heat  to  water,  the  further  art  of  cooking  by  boiling 
was  approached.  To  this  day  the  Assiniboines,  or  stone- 
boilers,  of  the  Canadian  Northwest  practise  the  most 
ancient  known  method  of  seething.  They  dig  a  hole  in  the 
earth,  line  it  with  hide,  and  fill  this  with  water  and  meat; 
hot  stones  one  after  another  are  immersed  in  the  liquid 
until  it  mounts  to  a  cooking  temperature.  From  a  cal- 
dron as  crude  as  this  sprang  the  kettle  hollowed  from  a 
tree  or  a  soft  stone,  the  basket-kettles  of  closely  twisted 
fibre  common  among  many  Indian  and  African  tribes, 
wh»  rein  water  is  brought  to  boiling-heat  by  the  immersion 
of  hot  stones. 

Having  become  an  adept  in  this  new  art,  the  wife,  not 
less  adventurous  in  experiment  than  her  husband,  varied 
their  repasts,  an  important  matter  in  savage  life  when  de- 
pendence upon  a  single  kind  of  food  might  mean  starva- 
tion. She  found  that  plants  repulsive  in  taste,  or  even 
poisonous,  when  plucked  from  the  field,  needed  only  boil- 
ing to  furnish  a  wholesome  and  toothsome  dish.  The 
squaws  of  southern  California  gather  several  kinds  of 
cruciferous  plants,  throw  them  into  hot  water,  then  rinse 
them  out  in  a  stream  and  use  them  as  food.      This  boiling 


POTTERY  27 

and  rinsing  remove  juices  which  have  a  bitter  taste  and 
provoke  nausea.  A  New  Zealand  woman,  with  a  degree 
of  temerity  hardly  to  be  commended,  once  ate  berries  of 
the  Laurus  taw  a  after  boiling  them  ;  she  found  that  the 
fruit  had  lost  its  deadly  poison  in  the  kettle.  Thus  un- 
knowingly did  she  cross  the  frontier  that  divides  skill  cu- 
linary from  art  medicinal,  a  feat  in  which  sisters  of  hers 
throughout  the  world  have  long  emulated  her  example. 
Primitive  broth-pots,  wretched  and  wasteful  as  they  seem 
to  us  now,  are  nevertheless  distinguished  in  their  progeny; 
they  foreran  the  stupendous  boilers  and  digesters  of  modern 
industry,  the  vast  metal  chambers  which  pour  out  sulphuric 
and  nitric  acids  for  the  chemist  and  the  electrician.  Volta, 
disposing  his  crown  of  cups  with  its  corrosive  bath,  was  a 
debtor  to  the  savage  who  first  added  a  kettle  to  a  grill. 

From  those  poor  hearths  of  old  sprang  many  of  the  arts 
which  most  dignify  mankind,  each  in  turn  as  fecund  as  its 
parent.      The  slab  on  which  was  laid  the 
broiling  fish  or  fowl  became  the  corner-  Pottery, 

stone  for  forge  and  furnace.  Cellini 
moulding  his  "Perseus  and  Medusa"  of  bronze,  Bes- 
semer burning  out  carbon  from  his  iron  that  steel  should 
be  left  behind,  both  enjoyed  inheritance  from  the  savage 
who  first  laid  a  stone  before  his  fire  to  make  its  heat  more 
serviceable.  In  those  days  of  small  things  it  would  have 
seemed  absurd  to  prophesy  that  fire  should  yet  make  arti- 
ficial stone,  and  in  forms  most  various,  all  able  to  resist 
flame  itself.  And  yet  what  else  is  pottery  ?  So  various 
have  been  the  earths,  salts,  and  metals  which  have  served 
the  potter,  so  much  ingenuity  has  he  displayed  in  shap- 
ing his  wares,  so  much  have  they  called  forth  all  his  skill 
as  a  decorator  and  depicter,  that  the  art  of  the  potter 
fills  one  of  the  most  interesting  chapters  in  human  advance, 
and  is,  indeed,  wont  to  mark  an  era  in  the  chronicles  of 
archaeology. 


28    FIRST  GAINS  FROM   KINDLED  FLAMK 

For  a  product  so  manifold  in  its  kinds  as  pottery,  so 
widely  diffused  throughout  the  world,  it  is  probable  that 
there  were  many  origins.  One  of  them  may  have  lain  in 
noticing  that  when  a  hearth  had  cooled  down  on  clayey 
soil  the  ground  had  taken  on  a  useful  hardness.  Or  it 
may  be  that  clay,  adhering  to  boughs  or  roots  as  they 
were  thrown  upon  a  fire,  gave  the  same  priceless  hint. 
Again,  it  may  have  been  in  coating  a  stick  with  clay  and 
thrusting  it  into  a  blaze  that  the  first  step  toward  pottery 
was  taken.  The  second  step  must  have  been  the  discovery 
of  tempering — that  a  little  sand  mixed  with  clay  kept  the 
mass  from  cracking  apart.  We  should  remember  that  in 
making  their  baskets  impervious  to  water,  the  early  crafts- 
men were  taking  a  long  stride  toward  the  skill  of  the  potter. 
To  this  day,  in  Arizona  the  Indians  coat  their  baskets  with 
clay  and  mud  to  retain  liquids.  An  ingenious  theory  as  to 
the  beginnings  of  pottery  was  published  a  hundred  years 
ago  by  M.  Goquet.  Aware  that  clay  is  often  daubed  on 
wooden  pots  and  kettles  as  a  protection  against  flame,  he 
held  that  when  at  last  the  wood  was  burned  off,  the  clay 
covering  would  stand  out  as  a  capital  vessel  by  itself. 
It  may  have  been  in  some  such  rude  way  as  this  that  the 
industries  which  now  flourish  at  Sevres  and  Worcester  first 
took  their  rise  ;  and  not  these  only.  From  primitive  wattle 
and  daub  probably  came  the  art  of  making  bricks  and  tiles, 
scarcely  less  useful  and  beautiful  than  pottery.  Clay  is  so 
excellent  a  material  for  tablets,  it  is  so  easily  hardened  in 
the  fire  after  it  has  been  impressed  by  the  stylus  or  the 
brush,  that  both  in  Assyria  and  Greece  it  gives  us  im- 
perishable records  of  great  civilisations. 

From  vessels  which  could  be  trusted  on  the  fire,  lessons 
of  the  highest  value  began  to  be  learned.  Water  is  often 
so  scarce  to  the  savage  that  his  wanderings  are  limited  to 
tracts  where  he  may  readily  find  it.  We  may  surmise  that 
in   times  of  drought   sea-water  was,    in   uncounted   cases, 


THE   FIRST   STEAM-ENGINE 


29 


boiled  in  the  attempt  to  make  it  drinkable.      But  the  longer 
the  boiling  the  saltier  the  residue,  until  at  last  salt  alone 
remained  in  the  pot.      Fire  had  refused 
to  do  the  work   required  of  it,  but,  in-    Aboriginal  chemistry 
stead,  it  had  done  something  better.     In       and  Engineering, 
a  few  hours  it  had  produced  precious  salt, 
a  task  for  which  the  sun  and  wind  upon  the  marshes  re- 
quired weeks.      But  in  the  first  place  water  had  been  joined 
to  the  salt,  and  whither  had  it  fled  in  the  boiling?     A  cold 
stick  or  stone  held  above  the  piping  pot  at  once  brought 
to  view  what  otherwise  seemed  annihilated  wholly ;  and  it 
was  further  noticed    that   this   recovered   water   was    free 
from  salt — was  pure.      A  trivial  enough  experiment,  per- 
haps,  but   it    was   the  starting-point  for  such    great    con- 
trivances  as  the    retort,   the   alembic,   and  the   still,   those 
producers  of  the  acids,  alcohols,  oils,  and  gases  of  modern 
industry. 

A  notable  addition  to  the  pot  or  kettle  was  the  lid ;  it 
kept  in  the  heat,  it  kept  out  falling  leaves  and  flying  cinders. 
When  an  abrupt  access  of 
heat  lifted  this  lid  there  was 
a  demand  for  employment 
by  force  out  of  work  which, 
repeated  often  enough,  is- 
sued at  length  in  Hero's 
device  of  the  asolipile,  so  in- 
geniously brought  down  to 
date  in  the  steam-turbine 
of  the  Hon.  C.  A.  Parsons 
(Fig.  7).  The  savage,  with- 
out being  able  to  philosophise  about  it,  had  long  with 
flint  and  fire-stick  converted  work  into  heat ;  it  required 
many  a  toilsome  century  to  reverse  the  process  and 
oblige  heat  to  do  mechanical  work.  When  the  lesson 
was  learned  at  last,  the  steam-engineer  was  glad  to  profit 


Fig.  7. 
Hero's  seolipile. 


30     FIRST  GAINS  FROM   KINDLED  FLAMK 

by  the  knowledge  of  fuels,  of  furnace-building,  of  sub- 
stances that  convey  heat  well  or  ill,  that  fire-users  began 
to  gather  long  prior  to  any  art  of  writing.  Of  those  distant 
days  we  have  but  the  unintended  records  of  forsaken 
hearths,  of  rusty  tools,  of  heaps  of  potsherds — relics  elo- 
quent of  the  mountainous  debt  the  present  owes  the  past. 

As  epoch-making  as  the  birth  of  pottery  was  the  union 
of   luck   and    skill  —  the    luck    earned    by   the  skill — which 

founded  the  art  of  glass-making.      Ame- 
Giass-making.         thysts,  emeralds,  garnets,  and  other  gems 

must  have  been  prized  from  their  first 
finding,  as  much  for  their  transparency  as  for  their  hue  and 
sparkle.  In  volcanic  streams,  then  as  now,  there  frequently 
lay  masses  of  obsidian,  some  of  it  fairly  transparent,  and 
readily  broken  into  thin  flakes  having  a  razor-like  edge 
adapted  for  spears  and  arrows.  When,  in  the  sheer  riot  of 
experiment,  sand  and  soda  were  fused  in  a  blaze  which 
mimicked  a  volcano's  heat,  by  a  man  shrewd  enough  to 
repeat  the  act,  there  was  added  to  human  resources  a  sub- 
stance of  more  than  golden  value.  Who  shall  compute  the 
worth  of  glass  for  windows,  lanterns,  lamps,  and  spectacles? 
In  the  telescope  and  microscope  it  reveals  worlds  too  re- 
mote or  too  minute  for  the  unassisted  eye;  in  the  lenses 
of  the  camera,  as  we  shall  presently  remark,  we  obtain  a 
secondary  and  derived  vision  of  every  image,  be  it  luminous 
or  not,  that  wings  its  way  through  space.  One  of  the  first 
services  of  glass  in  the  electric  age  was  to  form  the  Leyden 
jar  and  the  plates  from  which  f fictional  electricity  streamed 
forth.  For  the  later  developments  of  electric  art,  the  con- 
veyance of  currents  for  the  telegraph  and  for  power,  glass 
and  its  next  of  kin,  porcelain,  have  been  invoked  for  indis- 
pensable aid  as  insulators. 

Fire  to  early  man  had  many  minor  uses,  each  important 
in  its  way.  As  hunter  ami  fisherman  he  employed  it  to 
lure  his  prey,  to  affright  beasts  to  which  he  himself  was 


FIRE    AS    A    LURE  31 

prey,  or  to  yield  a  protecting  veil  of  smoke  against  insect 
pests  scarcely  less  to  be  dreaded.      Ernest  Ingersoll  says : 
"  When  a  savage  built  a  blaze  in  front 
of    his    rock    shelter    it    would   form   an  Lures, 

efficient  guard  from  attacks  by  wild 
beasts ;  within  a  circle  of  fires  a  camp  of  hunters  might 
securely  rest  or  sleep.  When  the  camp  was  left  behind 
a  fire-brand  would  be  one  of  the  best  of  weapons,  for, 
when  sturdily  wielded,  no  animal  is  able  to  face  it.  To 
this  day,  the  flourishing  of  fire-brands  as  a  defence  against 
dangerous  animals  is  common  among  wild  men  and  hunters 
encamped  in  savage  regions.  The  ability  to  set  fire  to  the 
jungle  might  more  rarely  be  of  great  service  in  ridding  the 
locality  of  troublesome  brutes.  Some  quadrupeds,  at  once 
timid  and  curious,  deer  especially,  are  allured  by  a  light, 
just  as  are  many  familiar  moths  and  flies  of  summer.  Deer 
feed  and  wander  mainly  at  night,  or  just  before  dawn,  and 
seldom  at  any  other  time  visit  ponds,  streams,  or  water- 
holes  of  the  plains.  The  hunter  who  carried  a  little  fire 
in  the  bow  of  his  canoe,  and  kept  himself  wholly  out  of 
view,  could  easily  paddle  within  arrow-shot  or  spear- fling 
of  a  deer  or  antelope,  which  would  stand  surprised  out  of 
its  natural  caution  by  the  strangeness  of  the  floating  light. 
This  resource  of  the  hunter  is  so  widely  practised  by  ex- 
isting savage  races  that  it  probably  dates  back  very  far  in 
the  history  of  primitive  food-getting.  As  with  hunting, 
so  with  fishing,  in  both  modern  and  remote  times.  A 
bright  light  now  serves  a  double  purpose,  and  may  have 
done  so  long  ago.  The  flare  brings  to  view  the  bottom 
of  the  stream,  or  of  the  sea  at  ebb-tide,  so  that  the  fisher- 
man, as  he  floats  quietly  by,  or  as  he  stands  upon  a  steep 
bank  or  isolated  rock,  can  see  to  strike  at  fish  whose  activity 
is  for  the  most  part  nocturnal.  Moreover,  to  some  fishes, 
and  especially  to  the  sturgeon,  such  a  light  is  an  irresistible 
attraction." 


}2     FIRST  GAINS  FROM  KINDLED  FLAME 

Half-burnt  sticks  from  their  first  tests  had  formed  tough 
and  durable  weapons,  oftener  in  demand  than  the  fire- 
brands, their  original  form.  Of  alliance 
Diverse  Aid.  to  the  fire-brand  there  was,  in  later 
days,  a  weapon  much  more  terrible. 
When  the  first  colonists  came  from  Europe  to  America, 
the  Indians  attacked  them  with  a  firearm,  where  invented 
nobody  can  tell.  This  weapon  was  an  arrow  to  which 
flaming  tow  was  fastened,  so  as  to  ignite  the  wooden 
houses  of  the  settlers.  That  this  strange  device  may  have 
been  contrived  long  before  seems  probable  when  we  learn 
from  Alcedo  that  the  Caribs  had  a  similar  weapon.  So 
peculiar  an  invention  is  likely  to  have  sprung  from  a  single 
mind,  and,  if  so,  must  have  required  ages  to  find  its  way 
to  New  England. 

The  man  of  war  has  often  taught  a  lesson  to  the  man  of 
peace.  Heavy  sticks  hardened  in  fire  and  drawn  over  the 
soil,  or  dragged  through  it,  as  in  China,  were  the  fore- 
runners of  the  harrows  and  ploughs  of  later  agriculture. 
Fire  softened  the  resins,  gums,  and  bitumens  which  ce- 
mented and  adorned  primitive  boats  and  tools,  such  as 
the  Eskimos  still  make.  Even  the  somewhat  advanced  art 
of  annealing  was  long  ago  a  familiar  practice.  Obsidian 
buried  under  embers  and  allowed  to  cool  with  them  became 
less  brittle  for  the  stress  and  strain  of  battle  or  the  chase. 

hire  can  preserve  as  well  as  destroy.  Man)'  ancient 
builders,  those  of  Switzerland  in  particular,  underpinned 
their  lake-dwellings  with  stakes  so  well  charred  that  they 
have  withstood  insects  and  decay  for  thousands  oi  years. 
At  Robenhausen,  where  excavations  have  been  conducted 
with  thoroughness  and  care,  one  may  see  relies  of  tools, 
bows,  and  even  a  last,  of  wood.  It  would  seem  that  dur- 
ing recurrent  conflagrations,  garments  of  woven  cloth,  bits 
ol  dressed  leather,  and  fragments  of  mills  and  looms  till 
into  the  water  as   the  scaffolding   gave  way,  sank   into  the 


FIRE   AS    SIGNALLER  33 

mud  of  the  lake,  and,  because  well  charred,  have  remained 
unchanged  to  the  present  day.  At  the  National  Museum 
in  Naples  are  many  relics  of  Pompeii  as  overwhelmed  by 
Vesuvius  in  A.  D.  79  ;  among  these  are  olives,  figs,  grain,  and 
bread,  which  fire  reduced  to  unalterable  form  more  than 
eighteen  centuries  ago. 

Fire,  from  remote  times,  has  been  employed  to  give 
signals,  as  a  means  of  communicating  intelligence.  In  the 
early  days  of  man  as  a  mariner  he  erected 

On     StOrm-SWept     COastS      beaCOnS     Whose   A  Primitive  Telegraph. 

blaze,  faithfully  tended,  gave  warning  or 
comfort  to  drifting  voyagers,  the  flickering  ray  foretelling 
the  sunlike  beam  of  Sandy  Hook  or  Skerryvore.  As  war- 
rior he  crowned  the  highest  hills  with  conspicuous  flares  to 
voice  alarm  to  scattered  allies,  prefiguring  every  modern 
telegraph.  The  smoke  of  camps,  in  its  betraying  or  reas- 
suring wreath,  rises  higher  than  fire,  and  this  has  been  fruit- 
fully observed  by  savages  on  opposite  sides  of  the  planet. 
The  Indians  of  the  plains,  as  described  by  Custer,  resort  to 
the  loftiest  hills  for  their  signal-stations.  There  they 
build  fires,  and  by  placing  an  armful  of  partly  green 
grass  or  weeds  over  the  blaze  as  if  to  smother  it,  a  dense 
white  smoke  is  created,  which  may  ascend  in  a  calm  atmos- 
phere as  a  column  for  hundreds  of  feet.  A  current  of 
smoke  established,  the  Indian  spreads  a  blanket  over  the 
smouldering  mass  so  as  to  confine  the  smoke  for  a  few 
moments.  By  rapidly  removing  the  blanket  he  sets  the 
column  free,  and  thus  by  a  succession  of  cloud-pulses  he 
sends  up  a  message  which  may  be  discerned  as  far  as 
fifty  miles  away.  The  aborigines  of  Victoria,  Australia, 
have  a  like  code  of  smoke-signals  by  which  they  have  been 
observed  to  tell  their  distant  comrades  of  the  capture  of  a 
whale  or  the  advent  of  an  exploring  party. 

Thus  even  in  its  aboriginal  uses  fire  in  a  high  degree 
multiplied    the    resources    and   powers    of    man.      Its   heat 


34     FIRST  GAINS  FROM   KINDLED  FLAME 

procured  him  a  rich  array  of  benefits:  it  unbarred  a  new 
breadth  of  the  globe  as  he  wandered  forth  in  search  of  bet- 
ter dwelling-places;  it  enlarged  a  dietary  which  became 
the  while  more  wholesome  and  appetising;  it  gave  him  the 
wherewithal  to  become  a  potter  and  glass-maker.  The 
light  which  streamed  from  his  blaze  was  as  generous  in 
blessings :  it  made  night  as  day  ;  it  rendered  habitable  and 
even  cheery  the  caves  which  otherwise  were  dark  and  per- 
ilous dungeons;  it  served  to  lure  the  fish  and  game  upon 
which  he  subsisted;  it  was  a  means  of  communicating  in- 
telligence as  far  as  the  eye  could  see  a  bonfire  or  a  pillar 
of  smoke. 


CHAPTER    IV 

THE    MASTERY    OF    METALS 

IN  the  fullness  of  time  the  fire-user  came  to  a  discovery- 
destined  to  throw  all  the  minor  utilities  of  flame  into 
eclipse — a  discovery,  indeed,  only  second  in  dignity  to 
that  of  fire-kindling  itself.  On  the  shores 
of  Lake  Superior,  in  the  Connecticut  The  Finding  of  Copper. 
Valley,  and  in  many  other  parts  of  the 
world,  were  picked  up  for  their  promise  of  new  qualities 
certain  heavy  stones — nothing  else  than  native  copper. 
These  masses,  treated  as  if  they  were  ordinary  stones  like 
the  rest,  soon  displayed  properties  of  a  marvellous  kind. 
Other  stones  were  easily  chipped  and  broken  under  the 
hammer;  these  spread  themselves  out  until  they  were  thin 
enough  to  be  used  as  knives  and  chisels,  having  an  edge 
much  more  lasting  than  that  of  flint.  More  singular  still, 
when  this  red  substance  was  put  in  the  fire,  it  softened 
so  as  to  yield  to  the  hammer  more  freely  than  before ;  if 
left  still  longer  in  a  blaze  it  melted  and  ran  like  so  much 
beeswax. 

Here  all  at  once  was  discovered  a  new  kind  of  wealth, 
almost  as  on  the  memorable  day  when  flame  was  first  inten- 
tionally created.  Never  yet  has  man,  early  or  late,  come 
into  new  riches  without  thinking  of  new  investments;  very 
soon  copper  was  shaped  into  a  wide  variety  of  articles, 
their  forms  borrowed  from  the  knives,  chisels,  and  orna- 

35 


36  THE   MASTERY    OF   METALS 

ments  of  familiar  stone.  The  metal,  however,  was  scarce, 
and  stone  plentiful,  so  that  as  a  material  for  tools  and 
weapons  stone  long  retained  its  predominance;  it  was  as 
pavingthe  way  to  the  great  achievements  of  metal-working 
that  copper  was  first  important.  Fire  in  the  hands  of  the 
metal-worker  has  proved  itself  a  multiplier  of  gifts,  a  creator 
of  powers  not  less  remarkable  than  in  other  provinces  of 
its  rule. 

Copper  fortunately  occurs  not  only  in  masses  substan- 
tially pure,  but  also  in  carbonates  which  yield  the  metal 
at  comparatively  low  temperatures.  Mr.  James  Douglas 
observes  that  the  Indians  of  Arizona  have  long  used  as 
food  the  unopened  interior  leaves  of  the  Agave  palmeri,  or 
mescal,  after  baking  them  in  hot,  stone-lined  pits  without 
access  to  air.  These  pits  would  readily  come  to  a  temper- 
ature high  enough  to  reduce  copper  from  pieces  of  carbo- 
nate ore  common  in  the  region,  which  might  be  built  into 
the  walls  of  the  pits.  The  accidental  discovery  of  this  reduc- 
tion would  lead  to  the  practice  of  copper-smelting.1 

Another  metal,  discovered  probably  as  earl)-  as  copper, 
and,  fortunately,  in  its  easily  reducible  oxide,  tinstone,  was 
tin.  Whether  at  first  copper  and  tin  were  found  combined 
in  an  ore,  or  whether  their  union  came  about  through  ran- 
dom experiment,  nobody  can  say.  Tin,  poor  in  itself,  when 
joined  to  copper  to  form  bronze,  develops  qualities  more 
desirable  than  those  of  copper  alone,  tin  having  the  dor- 
mant kind  of  value  that  comes  out  only  in  a  partnership. 
Winn  metals  fuse  together  they  dissolve  each  other  in 
ways  as  yet  little  understood.  The  solutions  which,  when 
cooled  to  solidity,  are  called  alloys,  are  riddles  as  yet 
unread,  like  many  of  the  kindred  solutions  which  remain 
liquid    at    ordinary    temperatures.2     Bronze    is    tougher, 

l  Mineral  Industry^  Vol.  111.  p.  243. 

'-'  Sir  William  Roberts- A  listen  h.i^  f"t  years  conducted  a  series  of  researches 
on  the  properties  oi  alloys.     A  remarkable  result  has  followed  Ins  applying  a 


IRON    AND   STEEL   IN    WAR  37 

stronger,  more  elastic  than  copper ;  it  takes  a  sharper  edge 
and  keeps  it  longer;  it  can  be  poured  into  moulds  at  a 
lower  temperature,  to  come  forth  a  casting  fairly  true  in 
form  ;  and,  what  is  a  matter  of  moment,  all  these  qualities 
are  modified  as  the  proportions  of  copper  and  tin  are  varied. 
Offering  this  fund  of  excellence,  bronze  gave  the  art  of  war 
an  impulse  almost  as  decisive  as  that  due  to  gunpowder 
when,  in  the  fourteenth  century,  it  enabled  the  soldiers  of 
Europe  to  throw  away  the  crossbow. 

At  the  Conquest  by  William  the  Norman,  in  the  eleventh 
century,  his  army  and  that  of  Britain,  in  point  of  bravery, 
were  equal ;  but  the  soldiers  of  William 
had  an  inestimable  advantage  in  the  pro-  The  Metals  in  war. 
ficiency  of  their  smiths.  The  Normans 
bore  weapons  of  steel  incomparably  elastic  and  strong  ;  they 
were  clad  in  steel  armour  from  head  to  foot ;  their  horses  were 
shod  with  iron  shoes.  What  chance  had  the  Britons,  lacking 
as  they  did  this  aid  from  the  miner  and  the  craftsman?  In 
prehistoric  times  it  is  altogether  likely  that  when  the  lance 
or  sword  of  copper  or  bronze  first  clashed  against  the  cudgel 
of  stone,  it  won  victories  even  more  decisive  against  tribes  or 
races  not  intelligent  or  fortunate  enough  to  rise  to  the  use  of 
the  new  arms.  When,  in  turn,  iron  and  steel  were  opposed 
to  bronze,  there  was  a  repetition  of  the  tragedy  by  which 
warriors  who  fell  short  of  a  new  acquisition  were  not 
simply  vanquished,  but,  in  all  likelihood,  extirpated — for  in 
savage  warfare  no  mercy  was  shown  to  the  conquered. 

Here  we  have  a  probable  explanation  of  the  gaps  which 
appear  in  the  genealogical  trees  of  many  native  races.  The 
appropriation  for  the  first  time  of  metals  as  arms,  the  suc- 
cessive   improvements  in   the   treatment    of   these   metals, 

moderate  heat  in  his  experiments.  On  fusing  a  strip  of  gold  to  the  base  of  a  lead 
bar,  maintained  for  a  month  at  250°  C. ,  well  below  the  melting-point  of  lead,  the 
gold-lead  alloy  has  travelled  up  to  the  top  of  the  lead  bar,  a  distance  of  2f 
inches.     This  phenomenon  is  plainly  akin  to  that  of  liquid  diffusion. 


>* 


THE    MASTERY    OF    METALS 


meant  making  weapons  of  sharper  edge  and  greater 
strength.  This  would  conduce  to  the  obliteration  of  tribes 
or  even  races  equipped  from  the  forest  or  the  quarry  instead 
of  the  mine,  or  wielding  arms  of  bronze  against  arms  of 
steel.  Metals  as  tools  meant  much  ;  as  weapons  they  meant 
everything.  In  the  corn-field,  the  workshop,  and  the  home 
the  mastery  of  metals  taught  a  new  deftness,  bestowed  a 
new  opulence;  in  the  field  of  war  the  skill  of  the  sword- 
maker  and  the  armourer  stood  for  victory  and  life  as  against 
defeat  and  extinction.  When  the  archer  was  swept  away 
by  the  gunner,  it  was  because  skill  had  made  for  gunpowder 
a  metal  barrel  strong  enough  to  resist  extreme  pressures. 

For  tools  no  less  than  for  weapons,  bronze  is  almost  as 
much  to  be  preferred  to  copper  as  copper  is  preferable  to  sim- 
ple stone.    Especially  have  axes  of  bronze 
Metai  Tools.  played  a  leading  part  in  the  prelude  to 

civilisation.  Forests  fell  before  them 
which  would  have  forever  defied  brittle  axes  of  stone — for- 
ests  which  could  not   have  been   safely  attacked  with   the 

firebrand.  Professor  Dawkins, 
in  Early  Man  in  Britain,  says: 
"  Under  the  edge  of  the  bronze  axe 
clearings  would  be  rapidly  pro- 
duced, pasture  and  arable  land 
would  begin  to  spread  over  the 
surface  of  the  country.  With  the 
disappearance  of  the  forest  wild 
animals  would  become  scarce, 
hunting  would  cease.'  to  be  so  im- 
portant, agriculture  would  im- 
Fig.  8.  prove,    and    a    higher    civilisation 

Primitive    bronze    horn,    Sue-   inevitably  follow."      Bronze  sickles 

den.    U.S.  National  Museum.     f  ,    •      /~  .      ,    n  .-,    •.,     .,.,  i    .,, 

found  in   ureal    bntain,  and  more 

abundantly   in    Switzerland   and    Savoy,    testify    that    the 

alio)'    was  early   impressed    into    the   service   of    husbandry. 


IRON    AS  CHIEF  39 

In  its  Egyptian  varieties  bronze  is  as  hard  as  steel,  furnish- 
ing tools  almost  indestructible.  From  its  beauty  the  com- 
pound metal  gave  opportunity  to  decorative  as  well  as  to 
useful  art.  Ancient  horns  and  bracelets  of  bronze  would 
do  credit  to  modern  workshops  (Fig.  8).  Why,  it  may  be 
asked,  have  comparatively  so  few  objects  in  copper  been 
transmitted  to  us  from  the  long  interval  between  the  age  of 
stone  and  the  age  of  bronze  ?  The  probable  explanation 
is  that  most  articles  of  copper  were  sent  to  the  melting- 
pot  as  soon  as  the  better  qualities  of  bronze  were  under- 
stood. 

But  as  bronze  had  displaced  copper,  so  it  in  turn  was  to 
meet  a  supplanter.  How  or  when  iron  was  discovered  it 
is  idle  to  conjecture.  From  its  compara- 
tive purity  in  meteorites  it  is  thought  that  iron, 
they  were  the  earliest  sources  of  it ;  to 
this  day  the  Eskimos  derive  their  iron  from  meteoric 
masses.  Nickel,  often  borne  in  meteorites,  has  been  de- 
tected in  many  ancient  articles  of  iron.  In  the  Mesabi 
Range  of  Lake  Superior,  iron  ore  is  torn  from  the  hills 
much  as  if  it  were  the  material  for  common  macadam  ;  in 
many  other  quarters  of  the  world  it  is  almost  as  plentiful. 
With  fireplaces  taking  on  somewhat  the  shape  and  char- 
acter of  furnaces,  with  fuels  better  chosen,  with  hollow 
reeds  or  fans  to  blow  an  artificial  breeze,  it  was  inevitable 
that  one  day  ironstone  should  be  thrown  into  a  flame  hot 
enough  to  free  the  iron  from  its  ore.  In  Africa  easily 
reduced  ores  are  still  worked  by  the  simplest  means ; 
Africa,  indeed,  from  its  wealth  in  such  ores,  may  well  have 
been  the  scene  of  the  first  iron-working. 

The  new  metal  soon  proved  itself  worth  all  the  trouble 
of  its  production.  It  was  stronger  than  bronze,  more 
elastic,  and  in  the  form  of  steel  took  a  keener  edge.  When 
heated  to  whiteness  two  pieces  could  easily  be  welded  with 
the  hammer,  so  that  long  rods  or  lances  could  be  made 


40  THE    MASTERY    OF    METALS 

from  it.  What  was  decisive  in  the  matter,  however,  was 
the  profusion  of  ironstone  in  contrast  with  the  rarity  of 
copper,  either  native  or  in  ores.  In  his  first  small  experi- 
ments it  is  unlikely  that  the  primitive  iron-maker  needed  a 
flux ;  as  his  operations  grew  bolder,  this  would  cease  to  be 
the  case.  So  various  in  composition  are  the  minerals  con- 
taining iron,  so  diverse  the  means  required  for  the  release 
of  this  metal,  that  the  iron-master  must  soon  have  become  a 
man  with  a  wide  outlook  on  the  resources  of  nature.  Only 
by  repeated  experiments,  persisted  in  despite  failure  after 
failure,  could  he  have  learned  what  to  add  to  his  ore,  so  that 
its  undesired  elements  might  be  drunk  up  and  flow  freely 
away.  Before  such  a  flux  as  limestone  could  be  lighted 
upon,  thousands  of  other  substances  must  have  been 
thrown  in  the  fire,  only  to  declare  themselves  inert  or 
harmful.  There  must  surely  have  been  a  long  series  of 
trials,  conducted  with  high  sagacity,  before  the  efficacy  of 
fuel  itself  in  ridding  metals  of  worthless  mixtures  could 
have  been  ascertained.  Indeed,  when  we  consider  the 
skill  of  the  old-time  metallurgist,  it  is  hard  to  believe  that 
he  was  destitute  of  some  pretty  clear  perception  of  law 
beneath  apparent  lawlessness.  Be  that  as  it  may,  the-  age 
of  science  owes  much  to  the  patience  which  would  shoot  so 
many  arrows  at  a  venture,  content  if  in  a  lifetime  one  of 
them  struck  its  mark. 

During  all  the  years  when  copper  and  iron  were  gradually 
surrendering  themselves  to  man,  other  metals  were  coming 

to    his   knowledge.       We    may    believe, 
steel.  from  its  occurrence  in  native  purity,  that 

gold  may  have  been  worked  even  earlier 
than  copper;  its  beauty,  its  freedom  Iron:  rust,  its  superb 
malleability,  would  commend  it  to  every  intelligent  tribe 
lucky  enough  to  find  it.  Lead  must  have  been  known 
early  in  the  day  of  metal-working,  from  the  comparativ<  ly 
low  temperature  which    reduces    it    from    its    ores.       Then, 


GIFTS    OF    STEEL  41 

at  periods  wholly  beyond  guessing,  silver  and  zinc  were 
found  and  used.  But  as  time  goes  on,  iron  confirms 
rather  than  relaxes  its  long  supremacy.  Transformed  into 
steel  by  adding  a  few  tenths  of  one  per  cent,  of  carbon,  it 
makes  possible  the  cheap  railroad  and  steamship  ;  it  builds 
the  machines  and  enginery  that  do  more  and  more  of  the 
drudgery  of  civilised  nations;  it  is  fast  revolutionising  the 
architecture  of  great  cities,  following  its  re-creation  of  the 
tunnel  and  the  bridge. 

It  is  because  steel  combines  strength  and  lightness  in 
the  highest  degree  that  we  find  an  office  building  reared 
to  thirty  stories,  that  an  ocean  steamer  exceeds  a  length 
of  700  feet.  Engines,  locomotives,  and  machinery  are 
built  to-day  in  dimensions  and  whirled  at  velocities  that 
would  have  made  the  mechanics  of  the  last  generation 
stand  aghast,  and  this  while  every  working  part  is  more 
durable  than  ever.  So  greatly  is  the  strength  of  steel  aug- 
mented by  modern  processes  of  manufacture  that  wire  is 
now  produced  which  sustains  a  load  of  1  70  tons  per  square 
inch.  No  single  cause  has  contributed  more  to  the  cheap- 
ening of  freights  than  the  building  railroads  of  steel  in- 
stead of  iron.  In  one  case  steel  rails  have  remained  in 
use  seventeen  years,  and  borne  more  than  50,000,000  tons 
of  traffic,  with  a  loss  of  but  5  pounds  of  metal  to  the  yard, 
and  this  while  safety  and  speed  have  been  much  increased. 
To-day  locomotives  are  constructed  of  steel  so  that  they 
can  go  farther  and  quicker  than  ever  before  with  the  mini- 
mum of  repairs.  Freight-cars  also  are  built  of  steel,  so 
that  they  carry  heavier  loads  proportionately  to  their  weight 
than  do  wooden  cars.  The  result  is  that  a  train  now  bears 
thrice  as  much  freight  as  a  similar  train  did  twenty  years 
ago,  and  charges  have  fallen  to  a  point  so  low  that  the 
policy  of  maintaining  canals  is  questioned  by  some  of  the 
most  judicious  minds  in  the  business  world. 

Steel,  itself  a  compound  or  an  alloy,  is  commingled  with 


42  THE   MASTERY   OF   METALS 

nickel  and  other  metals  with  astonishing  gains  in  its  best 
properties  of  toughness  and  strength.      Hence  the  unending 

competition  between  shot  and  armour-plate,  the  one  no 
sooner  advancing  to  a  new  power  of  penetration  than  the 
other  rises  to  a  new  resistance.  Shot  is  now  made  capable 
of  piercing  $"/  inches  of  wrought-iron,  the  point  of  the  shot 
remaining  intact,  although  the  striking  velocity  is  nearly 
2800  feet  a  second.  Certain  nickel-steels  studied  by 
Guillaume  seem  to  contravene  all  the  rules  one  is  accus- 
tomed to  associate  with  metals  or  alloys:  some  of  them  do 
not  expand  with  heat ;  others  contract  with  heat  and  expand 
with  cold.  The  magnetic  susceptibility  of  both  iron  and 
steel  disappears  on  the  addition  of  either  manganese  or 
palladium — a  fact  of  high  importance  to  men  as  far  apart 
as  the  ship-builder  and  the  watchmaker.  When  the  dream 
of  the  aeronaut  is  fulfilled  and  he  reigns  in  the  sky  at  last, 
it  will  be  largely  through  steel,  or  one  of  its  compounds, 
providing  him  with  a  structure  which  unites  the  utmost 
tensile  strength  with  the  least  possible  weight. 

On  its  commercial  side  the  expansion  of  the  iron  industry 
is  one  of  the  wonders  of  our  era.  A  furnace  at  Pittsburg 
swallows  250  tons  of  ironstone  at  a  single  charge.  From 
Lake  Superior  ports  were  shipped,  in  1  899,  cargoes  of  iron 
ore  amounting  in  the  aggregate  to  17,901,358  tons. 
The  United  States  now  leads  the  world  in  its  production 
of  iron  and  steel.  In  .Alabama,  rich  veins  of  iron  ore  and 
of  coal  for  its  reduction  lie  so  close  together  that  three 
pounds  of  pig-iron  were,  in  1897,  sold  for  one  cent. 

"  Startling  as  the  statement  may  seem,"  says  Sir  William 
Roberts- Austen,  "  the  destinies  of  England  throughout  the 
nineteenth  century,  and  especially  during  the  latter  half  of 
it,  have  been  mainly  influenced  by  the  use  of  steel.  Her 
steel  rails  seldom  contain  mote  than  one- halt"  per  cent,  of  car- 
bon. Her  ship-plates,  on  which  her  strength  as  a  maritime 
power  depends,  contain    less    than    half  that  amount.    .    .    . 


NEW    ECONOMIES  43 

Passing  now  to  questions  bearing  upon  molecular  activity, 
we  are  still  confronted  with  the  marvel  that  a  few  tenths 
per  cent,  of  carbon  is  the  main  factor  in  determining  the 
properties  of  steel.  We  are  therefore  still  repeating  the 
question,  How  does  the  carbon  act?  which  was  raised  by 
Bergman  at  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century.  That 
mystery  is  lessened  now,  as  it  is  known  that  the  mode  of 
existence  of  carbon  in  iron  follows  the  law  of  ordinary 
saline  solution."  l 

One  of  the  great  inventions  of  the  primeval  mechanic 
was  the  wheel,  which  originated  probably  in  the  section  of 
a  round  tree,  such  as  the  birch,  used  as  a  roller.  When  a 
wooden  wheel  was  strengthened  and  smoothed  by  a  metal 
tire,  its  friction  was  as  much  diminished  as  when  the  drag- 
ging of  a  load  on  the  ground  was  eased  by  placing  a 
roller  beneath  it.  An  advance  almost  as  important  is  en- 
joyed to-day  as  hardened  steel  is  worked  up  into  roller-  and 
ball-bearings.  These  appliances,  supplanting  plain  axle- 
bearings,  reduce  friction  to  the  vanishing-point  in  bicycles, 
elevators,  propeller-shafts,  machines  and  engines  of  all 
sorts. 

The  art  of  modern  metallurgy  centres  in  the  production 
of  iron  and  steel ;  other  metals  are  produced  all  the  better 
and   cheaper   for   the    lessons    the    iron- 
master   has    taught    his    brethren.        Espe-  Lessons  from  the 

cially   important  to   the   whole   guild   of  iron-master, 

metallurgists  is  the  steady  reduction  in 
the  amount  of  fuel  needed  to  yield  a  ton  of  pig-iron  ;  to- 
day not  more  than  40  per  cent,  as  much  coke  is  required 
as  when  small  and  unimproved  furnaces  were  employed. 
A  remarkable  economy  has  been  effected  here  by  the  hot 
blast,  devised  by  Neilson.  He  observed  that  the  first  work 
that  fuel  had  to  do  was  to  heat  the  air  for  its  own  combus- 
tion;  thought  he,  "  If  the  air  enters  the  fire  already  heated, 

1  Presidential  address,  Iron  and  Steel  Institute,  May,  1899. 


44  THE    MASTERY    OF   METALS 

the   resulting  temperature  will  be  much  higher  than  it  is 
and  mucli  more  effective — for  it  is  the  range  of  heat 
above  the  melting-point  of  the  metal  that  really  does  the 
busi;  Experiment  proved  him  right,  and  paved  the 

way  for  Sir  William  Siemens's  regenerative  furnace. 

This  is  so  contrived  that  the  hot  gases  resulting  from 
combustion  are  led  through  roundabout  chambers  of  brick 
which  absorb  their  heat ;  at  intervals  these  chambers  are 
1  to  the  gases  and  opened  to  the  air  on  its  way  to 
the  furnace — which  air  is  thus  raised  to  a  high  temperature 
with  no  outlay  tor  fuel.  The  apparatus  is  double,  its  halves 
alternating  in  their  absorption  and  surrender  of  heat.  Mr. 
Charles  KirchhorT,  in  analysing  the  cost  of  producing  iron 
in  an  establishment  at  Pittsburg,  found  that  the  consump- 
tion of  coke  had  been  reduced  14  per  cent,  in  the  decade 
ending  with  1897.  In  smelting  and  refining  lead  on  an 
extensive  scale  in  a  Western  city  during  the  same  period, 
the  consumption  of  fuel  declined  29  per  cent.  From  year 
to  year  the  furnaces  have  been  improved  so  as  to  smelt 
with  profit  charges  successively  poorer  and  poorer  in  metal. 
Previous  to  1890,  10  per  cent,  of  lead  was  considered  the 
minimum  for  satisfactory  results,  but,  since  then,  ores  con- 
taining as  little  as  6  per  cent,  of  metal  have  been  found 
rich  enough  to  repay  the  smelter  and  refiner.1 

The  recent  enormous  expansion  of  electrical  indusl 
has  given   an   unexampled   impet  the   metallurgy 

r.  Mr.  James  Douglas,  president  of  the  Copper 
•lidated  Mining  Company,  of  New  York  and 
Arizona,  states  (June  19,  1899):  "The  influence  oi 
metallurgy  on  the  treatment  of  copper  has  been  very 
marked.  The  hot  blast  has  not  been  generally  applied, 
owing  to  the  mixed  character  of  the  usual  charge,  and  to 
the  corrosive  action  of  the  gases,  which  require  working 
with  an  open  top.  Hut  where  high  furnaces  smelt  a  uniform 
1   Transaction  rr,  1899. 


OAK    AND    IRON    IN    CONTRAST        45 

ore,  and  the  gases  are  not  very  sulphuretted,  as  at  Mansfeld 
in  Germany,  hot-blast  stoves  like  those  attached  to  iron  fur- 
naces are  used.  The  Bessemer  converter  is  almost  every- 
where employed  to  concentrate  matte  to  metallic  copper. 
The  form  of  apparatus  is  that  applied  in  steel  metallurgy, 
but  the  converter  is  lined  with  slag-making  ingredients  and 
is  more  rapidly  corroded  than  the  gannister  of  the  steel 
converter." 

Let  us  for  a  moment  try  to  place  ourselves  at  the  dawn 
of  metallurgy,  an  industry  once  so  limited,  now  so  stupen- 
dous. Let  us  think,  if  we  can,  what  it 
meant  to  have  acquired  metal  as  a  ma-  The  Debt  to  Metals, 
terial  instead  of  wood  or  stone.  Our  first 
contrast  may  be  of  oak  with  iron.  Oak  may  be  readily 
cut,  sawn,  and  planed,  while  its  lightness  adapts  it  for 
buildings,  furniture,  or  for  the  handles  of  tools  and  weap- 
ons. But,  like  other  wood,  it  warps  with  moisture,  in 
the  tropics  it  is  the  prey  of  ants  and  other  voracious 
insects,  a  fire  of  low  temperature  will  consume  it,  and  it 
will  soon  crumble  to  decay  in  exposed  situations.  It  has 
strength,  but  not  enough  to  serve  as  a  knife  or  a  bolt. 
Its  elasticity  is  of  limited  range,  so  that  a  bow  of  oak  may 
easily  be  snapped  if  overstrained  by  an  archer.  Mark 
now  the  qualities  of  iron :  it  is  vastly  stronger,  tougher, 
more  elastic,  than  oak.  Fire  of  low  temperature  plays  round 
it  and  works  no  ill.  Not  only  is  iron  better  where  oak  is 
good,  but  it  has  properties  not  enjoyed  by  wood  of  any 
kind  :  it  may  be  melted  and  poured  into  moulds,  beaten  and 
rolled  into  sheets,  or  drawn  into  delicate  wire.  Paint  easily 
prevents  it  from  rusting.  Alloy  iron  with  a  little  carbon 
and  straightway  it  is  improved  in  its  best  qualities,  as  cop- 
per is  when  joined  to  tin.  In  its  unapproached  capacity 
for  magnetism  iron  is  the  core  of  modern  electric  art — as 
we  shall  duly  note. 

Contrast,  next,  sandstone  with  iron  as  a  material  for  the 


46  THE    MASTERY    OF    METALS 

craftsman.  Sandstone  is  readily  cut  and  carved  with  the 
chisel,  but  it  is  comparatively  weak  and  brittle.  It  is  su- 
perior to  nearly  every  other  stone  in  its  resistance  to  fire, 
but  it  has  little  elasticity,  so  that,  except  to  support  weight, 
where  bulk  is  admissible  or  desirable,  as  in  building,  it  has 
no  great  worth.  Or,  if  instead  of  sandstone  we  take  flint, 
a  mineral  which  has  done  so  much  good  work  in  the  world, 
we  find  that,  although  its  keen  edge  may  be  quickly  formed, 
this  stone  has  little  cohesion,  is  brittle,  and  has  therefore 
but  slight  durability.  In  no  region  of  art  do  we  find  the 
wizardry  of  fire  more  striking  than  here  :  it  renders  obso- 
lete many  materials  which  once  were  indispensable;  it 
creates  implements  of  a  size  and  strength  impossible 
before  the  use  of  iron  and  steel.  Metals  in  comparison 
with  any  other  raw  material  of  the  arts  have  the  supreme 
advantage  of  combining  rigidity  and  elasticity,  while  they 
are  at  the  same  time  plastic  enough  to  be  shaped  with  the 
punch  and  hammer.  Toil  multiplied  its  rewards  a  hundred- 
fold when  it  rose  to  the  use  of  metals,  it  easily  surmounted 
difficulties  not  to  be  fared  before  metals  were  shaped  and 
moulded.  Their  forms  of  use  and  beauty  range  all  the  way 
from  the  soup-kettle  to  a  filigree  brooch  such  as  the  silver- 
smiths of  Genoa  are  busy  making  to-day. 

While  art  took  on  new  refinements  as  its  materials  were 
refined,  the  kindling  of  fire  came  to  its  utmost  elegance  at 
the  hands  of  the  metal-worker.  At  the  annual  festival  of 
Kay  mi,  the  Aztec  priests  were  wont  to  collect  the  rays  ot 
the  sun  by  a  concave  mirror  of  metal,  so  as  to  inflame  a 
heap  of  child  cotton.  From  yet  another  quarter  did  fire 
create  a  novel  means  of  its  own  reproduction  —  when  the 
burning-glass  bade  sunshine  ignite  fuel  for  the  hearth. 

Let  us  casl  a  glance  at  eras  much  remoter  than  the  times 
when  skill  had  risen  to  the  making  of  mirrors  and  lenses. 
Da)  by  day,  as  the  primitive  metal-worker  was  adding  to 
his  stock  and  store  through  the  capabilities   of  his  servant, 


METALS   AS  TEACHERS  47 

fire,  the  man  himself  grew  richer  and  richer.  While  the 
things  he  could  find  or  make  by  the  aid  of  flame  were  in 
so  many  directions  multiplied,  equally  increased  were  his 
own  perceptions  and  thinking  powers.  His  eye,  as  it 
ranged  new  ground,  became  alert  for  the  lustre  or  the 
stains  that  betokened  useful  ores.  His  touch  learned  how 
to  choose  the  best  stones  and  clays  for  furnace  and  furnace- 
bed,  the  loam  for  moulds ;  it  took  on  accuracy  as  it  brought 
to  truth  the  edge  of  bronze  knives  and  sickles  or  chisels  of 
tempered  steel,  it  became  refined  and  deft  as  it  hammered, 
bent,  twisted,  and  drew  copper,  gold,  and  iron.  If  a  fuel 
was  reluctant  in  burning,  if  a  metal  for  the  tenth  or  the  twen- 
tieth time  eluded  his  effort  to  free  it  from  its  ore,  so  much 
the  more  was  his  ingenuity  spurred  and  strengthened  for 
eventual  success. 

His  brain,  endowed  with  knowledge  of  hundreds  of  new 
substances,  many  of  them  his  own  creations,  enriched  by 
all  the  tasks  his  hands  had  learned,  grew  strangely  resource- 
ful, so  that  when  a  new  want  arose  he  was  apt  with  a 
response  to  it.  His  world  had  widened  throughout  the 
whole  round  of  its  horizon ;  his  sway  over  that  world 
already  bore  the  promise  of  kingship  since  fulfilled.  Man 
dependent  on  such  fire  as  nature  might  perchance  bestow, 
and  man  kindling  fire  at  will,  are  as  creeping  babe  and 
sturdy  youth.  In  that  youth  of  the  race  were  sown  the 
seeds  of  skill  which  have  since  flowered  in  the  mechanic 
and  the  mechanician,  in  the  artisan  and  the  artist,  in  the 
observer  and  the  explorer,  who  by  subtlest  indirection  bring 
within  the  narrow  scope  of  sight  and  hearing  a  universe 
otherwise  unseen  and  silent.  When  dexterity  rose  to  the 
point  of  making  fire  it  enlarged  the  sphere  for  its  further 
exercise  by  nothing  short  of  a  celestial  diameter. 


CHAPTER   V 

MOTIVE    POWER    FROM    FIRE 

WE  have  seen  how  metals  in  their  earliest  uses  were 
formed    into  tools   of    new   strength   and    wearing 
quality,  inciting  their  possessors  to  tasks  impossible  before. 

Without  metals,  at  once  strong,  durable, 
steam-engines.        and  resistant  to  flame  as  wood  ami  stone 

are  not,  there  could  have  been  no  ad- 
vance from  tools  to  machines,  nor  from  machines  to  the 
engines  which  automatically  drive  them — all  with  vast 
multiplication  of  the  fruits  of  human  toil.  But  long  be- 
fore this  employment  of  metals  for  the  alleviation  of  human 
drudgery  there  had  been  a  noteworthy  escape  from  the 
severest  burdens  of  labour. 

Any  survey,  however  rapid,  of  the  advances  of  man  since 
the  ages  when  he  dwelt  in  trees  or  caves,  must  pause  to 
consider  his  weighty  debt  to  the  brutes  he  tamed  or  yoked 
to  his  service.  The  domestication  of  animals  probably 
began  with  the  capture  of  young  wolves  and  sheep, 
oxen  and  horses,  at  first  rather  for  amusement  than  use. 
Rich  were  the  rewards  of  the  nun  intelligent  and  forbear- 
ing enough  to  rear  the  e  creatures — for  now  they  enjoyed 
new  sources  of  food-supply,  new  aids  in  the  chase,  fresh 
materials  for  clothing,  and,  in  the. case  of  draught-animals, 
much  exhausting  labour  was  transferred  to  the  muscles  of 
horses  and  oxen.      For   ages   all    the   way   down   to  three 

4* 


WATT    AND   HIS   FORERUNNERS       49 

centuries  ago,  man  never  seems  to  have  suspected  that  the 
fuels,  which  did  so  much  work  for  him  in  the  forge  and 
furnace,  were  able  to  pass  to  the  field  and  there  tire  out 
the  most  powerful  beasts  ever  harnessed  :  the  identity  of 
heat  and  mechanical  power  lay  hidden  from  his  eyes. 

Although  the  aeolipile  of  Hero  was  rotated  by  steam 
two  thousand  years  ago  by  the  same  force  that  twirls  the 
familiar  fountains  of  to-day,  there  is  no  proof  that  Hero's 
device  was  applied  to  serious  work,  or  followed  by  contri- 
vances of  higher  efficiency  (Fig.  7).  A  water-pump  with  its 
cylindrical  barrel  and  moving  piston  is  an  old  invention, 
and  probably  suggested  the  first  form  of  the  steam-engine. 
That  rude  apparatus  was  a  cylinder  partly  filled  with  water 
and  placed  directly  on  a  fire.  As  steam  was  generated  the 
piston  rose  and  did  work ;  when  it  had  arrived  at  the  end 
of  its  journey  the  cylinder  was  cooled  by  dashing  water 
upon  it,  and  the  heating  and  lifting  process  was  slowly 
repeated.  Newcomen  effected  a  decided  improvement  by 
throwing  a  jet  of  cold  water  into  the  cylinder;  Watt  did 
still  better  when  he  took  the  steam,  after  it  had  lifted  the 
piston,  to  a  separate  condenser  permanently  kept  cool  by 
a  stream  of  water.  He  thus  economised  heat  and  increased 
the  efficiency  of  the  engine  in  a  remarkable  degree. 
Provided  with  this  improved  engine,  the  manufacturer  and 
the  miner  passed  at  a  bound  from  a  petty  to  a  huge  scale 
of  operations;  the  modern  revolution  of  industry,  with  its 
factory  system  and  its  subdivision  of  labour,  dates  from  the 
great  saving  of  fuel  effected  in  the  engine  of  Watt. 

He  was  fully  aware  that  a  further  saving  lay  in  the  use 
of  high  pressures,  but  he  had  not  boilers  strong  enough, 
cylinders  true  enough,  nor  pistons  sufficiently  tight  for 
steam  much  beyond  atmospheric  pressure.  As  boiler- 
makers  and  engine-builders  have  grown  more  and  more 
expert,  have  brought  new  lathes  and  tools  of  precision  to 
their  aid,  steam  pressures  have  constantly  risen  beyond  the 


50  MOTIVE    POWER    FROM    FIRE 

low  range  possible  to  Watt.  Of  late  years  the  movement 
in  this  direction  has  been  rapid.  Whereas  in  1880  marine 
engines  rarely  ran  with  pressures  exceeding  75  pounds  to 
the  square  inch,  to-day  a  pressure  of  150  to  200  pounds  is 
common.  Steam  at  200  pounds  needs  but  little  more  heat 
for  its  production  than  steam  at  75  pounds,  yet  nearly 
double  the  duty  may  be  had  from  it.  Professor  Thurston 
formulates  the  rule  that  the  working  value  of  steam  in- 
creases as  the  square  root  of  increase  in  pressure,  so  that 
the  use  of  steam  at  400  pounds  means  getting  twice  as 
much  motive  power  as  at  100  pounds.  Strange  to  say,  the 
higher  pressure  costs  only  one  thirty-fourth  more  heat 
than  the  lower. 

In  improving  the  design  of  steam-engines,  not  less  than 
in  bettering  their  furnaces  and  boilers,  the  principal  part 
has  been  played  aboard  ship.  The  mariner  of  old  was 
probably  the  first  man  to  turn  to  account  the  force  of  the 
winds.  When  the  mariner  of  fo-day  furls  his  sails  for  good 
and  all  it  is  because  he  succeeds  in  getting  more  work  out 
of  coal  than  anybody  else.  When  a  factory  engine  can  be 
so  improved  as  to  save  100  tons  of  coal  a  year,  its  owner 
increases  his  profits  by  the  cost  of  so  much  fuel.  With  a 
like  amelioration  of  a  marine  engine  its  owner  saves  not 
only  in  his  coal  bill,  but  he  has  gained  more  room  for 
cargo.  This  is  the  premium  which  has  developed  at  sea 
the  utmost  economies  of  design  and  operation,  so  as  to 
make  the  marine  type  of  engine  a  model  to  be  copied  on 
land.  Within  the  past  decade  the  Atlantic  has  been  virtu- 
ally bridged  by  a  fleet  of  freight- vessels  running  at  a  cosl 
so  low  as  to  bring  the  wheat-fields  of  Minnesota  and 
Dakota  to  the  neighbourhood  of  Liverpool  and  London. 
No  wonder  that  the  British  farmer  in  his  distress  turns  to 
fruit-growing  and  dairying! 

Beginning  chiefly  with  engines  of  marine  type,  there 
ha-  been    within   the  past   fifty   years  a  i\<»v  and  critical 


SUPERHEATING  AND  COMPOUNDING  51 


study  of  every  source  of  loss,  with  exhaustive  tests  of 
improved  modes  of  construction  and  working.  As  steam 
expands  in  a  cylinder  it  chills  itself,  and  imparts  a  chill  to 
the  metal  of  which  the  cylinder  is  built,  so  that  the  next 
charge  of  steam,  as  it  enters,  is  cooled  so  much  as  to  lose 
in  extreme  cases  fully  40  per  cent,  of  its  working  value. 
An  important  remedy  for  this  evil  is  to  maintain  the  tem- 
perature of  the  cylinder  by  a  jacket  of  hot  steam. 
Two  other  effective  plans  consist  in  superheating  and  in 
compounding.  A  superheater  is  a  series  of  tubes  exposed 
to  the  furnace  gases,  and  so  placed  that  the  steam  passes 
through  it  on  its  way  from  the  boiler  to  the  engine.  When 
steam  not  in  contact  with  water  is  thus  raised  in  tempera- 
ture it  is  no  longer  liable  to  condensation  in  a  working 
cylinder.  In  compound  engines  economy  is  introduced 
from  a  new  quarter. 
Two,  three,  or  even 
four  cylinders  receive 
the  steam  in  turn ; 
because  the  chill  due 
to  expansion  takes 
place,  not  in  one  cyl- 
inder, but  in  two  or 
more,  this  chill  is 
spread  over  two  or 
more  surfaces  instead 
of  over  one  surface, 
and,  thus  subdivided,  Fig.  9. 

it   can    be    effectively     Westinghouse  single-acting  compound  engine. 
a-  ,  ^  ,  A,  high-pressure  cylinder ;   B,  low- 

offset    by    thorough  '   ,. 

J  °  pressure  cylinder. 

jacketing.  Com- 

pounding has  also  advantages  from  a  mechanical  point  of 
view  which  cpmmend  it  to  the  builders  of  large  engines  as- 
signed, as  in  pumping,  to  constant  duty  (Fig.  9). 

Let    two    remarkable    feats    in    American    and    German 


MOTIVE    POWER    FROM    FIRE 

steam-engineering   be   adduc  r  Thurston,   ad- 

sing  the  Ann  S        ty  oi  Mechanical  Bngin 

New  York,  Decembei  ited  that  a  Hall 

quadruple-expansion   engine   using   steam   at   400   pounds 

sure,  had  ;  >ed  a  hors  ■  ~  •      nds 

steam  per  hour.      This  displa;  version  into  work  o£ 

nt   oi  the  heat   value  oi  tlie  steam  supplied. 
In  a  Schmidt  compound  engir  f  750 

indicated  hors  -team  is  superheat  5 

ses  1        s  -  uer  and 

over    again,    the  »t  stean  neat   the 

-      .  fore  it  r 
the  1  am  on  rec   :  .  — v;  ;. 

•  '      Its  effici  -  —  • 

st    im  empl 
and  under  th< 

2    0  pounds    press  one 

.:n    three 
quar 

sire  to  obtain  a 

s 

t  seems 

- 
re  thai  ing   oils  a 

- 

:,tion 

The 

- 

- 

!     - 


THE    STEAM-TURBINE 

boiler  near  by    (Fig.    7).     As  steam  rushed  out  from  two 
nozzles  diametrically  opposite  to  each  other,  and  at  tan- 
gents to  the  globe,  there  resulted  from  the 
relieved  pressure  a  swift  rotation  which     The  Btum  fiWoc. 

..  have  done  useful  work.  Indeed, 
if  Hero  had  been  able  to  use  high-pressure  steam,  and 
had  had  metal  strong  enough  to  withstand  the  tremen- 
dous bursting  tendency  of  great  speeds,  he  would  have 
had  a  steam-engine  as  efficient  as  many  which  still  linger 
in  the  smaller  and  older  factories  of  America.  Hero's 
device  had  inherent  excellence  in  its  continuous  rotation 
— decidedly  preferable  to  a  piston  motion  that  may  re- 
verse its  direction  several  times  in  a  second.     In  order  to 

-n  to  this  primitive  merit  it  was  necessary  to  gain  skill 
and  insight  by  advancing  through  a  succession  of  intricate 
devices ;  a  labyrinth  brought  the  investigator  at  last  to  a 
height  from  which  he  could  clearly  discern  an  escape  to 
economy.  Before  the  steam-turbine  could  be  invented, 
~t:;!'.-.:rc:=::  =.r.i  —  -::.}.:?  :  i  i  :  :e:  r.r  .--:..:_!  ;-■:•:;:. 
to  provide  machinery  which  may  with  safety  rotate  10,000 

s  in  a  minute:  Watt  had  to  invent  the  separate  con- 
denser; means  had  to  be  devised  for  the  thorough  expan- 
sion of   high-pressure   steam;    and  the   crude  device   of 
Hero  had  to  be  supplanted  by  wheels  suggested  by  the 
- 

distinction  is  the  ingenious  method  by  which  its  steam  is 
usee  In  a  piston-engine  the  cylinder  is  filled 

to  one- twelfth  or  one-fifteenth  of  its  capacity  with  high- 
-  -         -  =  :_; 

off ;  during  the  remainder  of  its  stroke  the  piston  is  urged 

-    :  :  I: :  : :.-  :  -.--    :.5  :    -       7    re- 

arranging what  is  practically  a  series  of  wheels  on  the  same 
shaft,  the  steam  passes  from  one  wheel  to  the  next,  and 
a:   ei::.      r.er.  :-      ::r.  i    : -.-..:     :.    ::     _-  ::r5i_r: 


S4 


MOTIVE    POWER    FROM    FIRE 


':'"'.  '::l:.-;. — : 


Fir;.  10. 

Moving-blades  and  guide-vanes  of  the 

Parsons  steam-turbine. 


and  velocity  (Fig.  10).  The  illustration  shows  the  arrange- 
ment of  moving- blades  and  guide-vanes,  the  top  outer 
cover  of  the  case  having  been  removed.  The  revolving 
barrel  has  keyed  into  its   curve  the   moving-blades.      The 

end  of  one  row  of  the 
guide-blades  can  be  seen 
in  the  sketch,  though  not 
very  plainly.  Between 
each  two  rings  of  moving- 
blades  there  is  a  ring  of 
guide-blades,  these  latter 
being  keyed  into  the 
containing-cvlinder.  In 
working,  steam  is  admit- 
ted into  the  narrow  space  between  the  barrel  and  the  case, 
and  is  directed  by  the  first  ring  of  fixed  guide-blades  in  a 
direction  spiral  to  the  axis  of  the  revolving  barrel.  The 
steam  next  comes  in  contact  with  a  ring  of  revolving 
blades  on  the  barrel.  These  are  set  at  an  angle  so  that 
the  steam  acts  on  them  as  wind  on  the  sails  of  a  windmill, 
causing  the  barrel  to  revolve.  A  further  set  of  fixed  guide- 
vanes  rotates  the  flow  of  steam,  and  then  another  set  of 
revolving  vanes  is  impinged  upon,  and  so  on  from  admis- 
sion to  exhaust.  In  this  way  moderate  pressures  are  ob- 
tained, and  the  turbine  may  be  directly  coupled  to  a 
dynamo,  a  fan,  or  a  pump. 

The  locomotive  engine  was  born  in  the  coal-mine.      It 

was  because  coal- wagons  had  long  been  drawn  upon  pairs 

of  iron  rails  that  at  last  similar  rails  were 

The  Locomotive  and       laid   above   grOUnd,    SO    that    h<  Tms    might 

steamship.  gQ  fa^(.,-  an,i  u-ith  larger  loads  than  upon 

macadam,    however     good.       When    the 

steam-engine  proved  itsell  so  much  better  and  cheaper  than 

horses  in  turning   tin-   shafts  of   spindles  and  looms,  it  was 

asked,  Why  not  put  this  machinery  on  wheels  moved  by 


A   MILE    IN    38   SECONDS  55 

itself,  and  see  if  it  will  not  be  cheaper  and  quicker  than  trac- 
tion by  horses?  The  experiment  was  tried  by  one  inventor 
after  another,  and  with  fair  success,  but  for  a  signal  triumph, 
which  for  good  and  all  should  dismiss  the  horse  from  long- 
distance travel,  there  was  needed  a  genius  cast  in  the  large 
mould  of  George  Stephenson. 

He  built  for  the  famous  competition  at  Rainhill,  October 
8,  1829,  a  locomotive  which  far  excelled  its  rivals.  The 
Rocket  won  its  victory  by  its  inventor's  adoption  of  two 
capital  devices :  first,  small  copper  tubing  for  the  boiler, 
which  had  the  effect  of  greatly  increasing  the  effec- 
tiveness of  the  fuel;  second,  a  blast  of  exhaust-steam  for 
his  chimney,  which  intensified  the  furnace  draught.  The 
Rocket  with  its  water — carried  in  a  cask — weighed  but 
4^  tons;  it  drew  in  its  wagons  13  tons  of  freight;  and 
although  its  average  pace  was  but  15  miles  an  hour,  it 
made  one  spurt  at  the  rate  of  29.  Here  at  last  was  a 
practical  locomotive,  lacking  nothing  except  to  perfect  the 
details  of  its  design  and  construction.  At  a  bound  the 
civilised  races  of  mankind  passed  from  dependence  on  the 
postilion  to  reliance  on  the  engineer.  For  all  purposes  of 
communication,  whether  of  things,  persons,  or  ideas,  it  was 
as  if  the  planet  had  that  day  shrunk  to  one-fourth  its 
former  dimensions.  A  passenger  locomotive  built  at  the 
Baldwin  Works,  Philadelphia,  has  travelled  a  mile  in  38 
seconds;  a  giant  engine  from  the  same  factory  weighs  ii2£ 
tons,  and  draws  on  a  level  stretch  of  track  no  less  than 
5000  tons  of  freight  (Fig.  11).  In  its  latest  and  best 
models  the  engine  due  to  Stephenson  embodies  the  prin- 
ciple of  multiple  expansion,  with  the  result  that  it  holds 
the  field  somewhat  stubbornly  against  the  electric  locomo- 
tive that  fain  would  displace  it. 

Scarcely  less  important  than  the  locomotive  in  making 
the  world  one  parish  is  the  steamboat,  and  its  ally,  the 
steamship.      It  was  the  second  year  of  the  nineteenth  cen- 


56  MOTIVE    POWER    FROM    FIRE 

tury  when  the  Charlotte  Dundas  of  William  Symington 
sped  its  way  through  the  Forth  and  Clyde  Canal.  Its 
whole  bulk  is  to-day  far  exceeded  by  that  of  the  machinery 
which  drives  an  ocean  greyhound  from  Southampton  to 
New  York.  The  Parsons  steam-turbine  on  board  ship 
has  exceeded  its  performances  on  land.  The  Turbinia,  a 
torpedo-boat  of  44.}  tons  displacement,  100  feet  in 
length,  and  9  feet  in  beam,  driven  by  this  turbine,  has  con- 
sumed but  14A  pounds  of  steam  an  hour  per  indicated 
horse-power.  The  Viper,  a  torpedo-boat  destroyer  oi 
325  tons,  and  provided  with  a  turbine  capable  of  develop- 
ing as  much  as  12,000  horse-power,  ran  at  the  rate  of  37 
knots  in  a  rough  sea  during  her  trial  trip  in  November, 
1899.  Mr.  Parsons  states  that  a  cruiser  furnished  with  a 
similar  motor  of  the  utmost  capacity  could  steam  economi- 
cally at  16  knots  an  hour,  and  on  emergency  treble  this 
speed  for  three  hours,  or  maintain  the  gait  of  45  knots  for 
eight  hours.  The  tactical  value  of  such  a  vessel  to  a 
squadron  in  time  of  war  is  obvious. 

It  is  probable  that  the  next  advance  in  the  speed  of 
ocean  travel  will  be  due  to  building  steamers  exclusively 
for  passengers,  relegating  the  carriage  of  freight  to  vessels 
much  less  rapid  and  costly.  The  builders  of  the  Turbinia 
have  prepared  designs  for  an  ocean  liner  of  600  feet  in 
length,  of  18,000  tons  displacement,  and  of  38,000  indi- 
cated horse-power.  Her  ocean  speed  is  estimated  at  26 
knots  an  hour;  her  total  engine-room  weight  would  be 
reduced  to  about  one-half  that  of  ordinary  engines,  while 
there  would  be,  it  is  claimed,  a  small  reduction  in  steam 
consumption  to  the  credit  of  the  new  motors. 

In  both  its  stationary  and  marine  designs,  the  steam- 
turbine  marks  a  distinct  advance  upon  the  piston-engine. 
It  weighs  less,  it  occupies  less  room,  it  costs  less  at  first 
and  for  attendance  and  repairs,  it  asks  for  no  expensive 
foundations  as   it   does   not    require   to   be   bohed   down. 


Fig.  ii. 

Baldwin  locomotive,  built  for  the  Lehigh  Valley  R.  R.  Co. 

Weight,  225,000  pounds. 


Fig.  12. 

Westinghouse-Parsons  turbo-alternator. 

500  horse-power  capacity  at  125  pounds  steam-pressure  condensing;  3600 

revolutions  per  minute. 


DISTANCE    OBLITERATED  57 

Because  no  lubricant  enters  its  steam-space,  the  exhaust  is 
free  from  oil,  much  to  the  benefit  of  both  the  boiler  and 
the  condenser.  A  ship  driven  by  a  turbine  is  much  freer 
from  vibration  than  if  a  piston-engine  were  employed. 
Let  the  steam-turbine  on  land  or  water  give  as  much 
power  from  a  pound  of  coal  as  a  compound  piston-engine, 
and  it  will  soon  have  the  field  to  itself  (Fig.  12). 

Proficiency  in  the  use  of  fire  in  metal- working  has  ad- 
vanced side  by  side  with  proficiency  in  the  application  of 
fire  as  the  motive  power  for  transporta- 
tion.       The    national    aspects    of    the   tWO,       National  Aspects  of 

as   to-day   they   mutually   aid   and   pro-     Modern  Locomotion, 
mote  each   other,  was  touched   upon  in 
an  address  by  Mr.  James  Douglas,  delivered  as  president 
to  the  American  Institute  of  Mining  Engineers,  San  Fran- 
cisco, September  25,  1899: 

This  obliteration  of  distances  by  steam-power  has  altered  com- 
pletely the  social  conditions  of  the  country.  Before  the  railroad 
and  steamboat  wrought  the  industrial  unification  of  the  conti- 
nent, not  only  were  food  and  clothes  the  product  of  local  and 
domestic  manufacture,  but  such  a  necessary  article  as  iron  was 
cast  in  small  furnaces  or  reduced  in  small  bloomeries,  wherever 
iron  ore  and  charcoal  were  found  in  even  limited  quantities  near 
a  water-power.  To  transport  either  fuel  or  ore  any  distance  over 
bad  country  roads  to  large  establishments  was  less  economical  than 
running  the  village  furnace  or  forge.  In  1840,  therefore,  the  fur- 
naces, bloomeries,  and  forges  were  scattered  over  the  land  to  the 
very  outskirts  of  civilisation  in  Michigan  and  Wisconsin.  Soon 
after  that  date  commenced  the  concentration  of  raw  material  and 
the  shifting  of  the  centres  of  the  iron  industry  to  a  few  favoured 
localities.  The  process  has  continued  ever  since,  to  the  serious 
detriment  and  even  destruction  of  some  of  the  older  mining  and 
metallurgical  districts,  while  prosperous  communities  have  been 
created  in  what  a  generation  or  two  ago  was  an  inaccessible  wil- 
derness. Ore  and  fuel  need  no  longer  be  in  natural  juxtaposition, 
for  ore  from  the  Mesabi  Range  can  be  transported  50  miles  by 
railroad,  transferred  to  a  vessel  for  a  trip  of  800  miles  bv  water, 
re-transferred  to  cars  for  a  further  journey  of  80  miles,  and  deliv- 
ered at  so  low  a  figure  at  Pittsburg  that  steel  rails  made  from  it 
by  the  aid  of  mechanical  appliances  have  been  sold  at  $17  per 


58 


MOTIVE    POWER    FROM    FIRE 


ton.     It  is  less  than  a  generation  ago  that  Bessemer  rails  made  by 

the  same  process,  but  out  of  costlier  ores  and  by  cruder  appli- 
ances, cost  $120.  In  very  truth,  SO  obedient  have  the  forces  ol 
nature  become  to  the  will  of  man  that  weights  and  distances  that 
in  the  days  of  manual  labour  and  horse-cartage  were  controlling 

considerations,  are  being  almost  eliminated  from  the  calculations 
of  modern  engineers. 

During  1898  Great  Britain  consumed  76,000,000  tons  of 
coal  in   the  production    of   power  for  industrial    purposes. 
During    the    same    period,    the    United 
Economy  in  Details.    States,  in  all  likelihood,  burned  one-third 
more.       No   wonder   that    of  late    years 
the  time-honoured  agencies  for  the   production  of  steam- 
power  have   been  sternly  catechised   as   to   their  perform- 
ance   of    duty,    and    have    been     quickly    cast    aside    as 
more    efficient    rivals    have    appeared.      Improvements    in 
detail  began,  indeed,  long  ago.      At  first,  just  as  in  a  com- 
mon cook-stove,  the  steam-boiler  stood  quite  outside  the 
fire.      A   long  stride   ahead  was  taken  when   the  fire  was 

put  inside  the  boiler, 

h)}  /Ar  fifSt      iU      a     Sin^le      m'e 

in  the  Cornish  type, 
and  then  in  two  flues 
in  the  Lancashire 
type  (Fig.  13).  If 
two  flues  were  better 
than  one  because  they 
extended  the  surface 
at  which  flame  could 
do  work,  would  it  not 
be  still  better  to  mul- 


Fin.  13. 
I  an.  ash  ire  boiler. 


tiply  the  two  into  scores?     Flues  were  multiplied   accord- 
ingly and  reduced  to  the  small  dimensions  familiar  to  the 
ent  hour  in  the  boilers  of  locomotives.     Because  the 

tubes  were    narrow    they    brought   a  new   advantage:    they 
could   safely    be    made    thinner    than    large    tines    or    big 


WATER,    NOT    FIRE,    IN    TUBES 


59 


boilers,  and  so  heat  could  pass  through  them  more  easily. 
With  this  benefit,  however,  there  came  a  serious  draw- 
back. Soot  and  ashes  are  apt  to  gather  inside  a  fire-tube 
and  seriously  interfere  with  its  heat- 
ing power.  The  remedy  for  this  is 
ingenious  enough :  the  tubes,  in- 
clined in  position,  are  filled  with 
water  instead  of  fire,  and  are  put  in 
the  hottest  part  of  the  furnace.  Of 
course,  soot  and  ashes  collect  upon  them  there,  but  never 
to  so  formidable  a  degree  as  within  the  body  of  fire-tubes, 
and  always  so  as  to  be  readily  removable  (Fig.  14).  The 
water-tubes  are  connected  with  a  boiler,  reduced  in  size, 
which  serves  as  a  reservoir  for  both  water  and  steam  (Fig.  15). 


Fire  in  Tube.     Water  inTube. 
Fig.  14. 


feJ--^- 


Fig.  15. 
Babcock  &  Wilcox  water-tube  boiler. 

As  in  many  diverse  industries,  we  here  can  note  how 
advance  in  one  application  of  fire  promotes  economy  in 
another.  In  the  construction  of  the  modern  boiler  there 
is  great  advantage  in  the  adoption  of  steel,  which  is  so 
strong  as  to  be  available  in  thinner  sheets  and  tubes  than 
the  wrought-iron  originally  employed.      Beyond  this  gain 


()o         MOTIVE    POWER    FROM    FIKE 

there  is  further  benefit  at  hand  Mr.  A.  F.  Yarrow,  the 
eminent  builder,  stated  before  the  British  Institution  of 
Naval  Architects,  July  21,  1899,  as  the  results  of  experi- 
ments, that  nickel-steel  containing  20  to  25  per  cent,  of 
nickel  is  much  longer  lived  than  the  mild  steel  in  ordinary 
use.  The  alloy  resists  corrosion  almost  thrice  as  well  as 
mild  steel,  and  deteriorates  only  one-half  as  much  from 
the  action  of  gases  and  steam.  Stronger  materials  mean 
bigger  boilers  and  engines.  The  New  York  Gas,  Electric 
Light,  Heat  and  Power  Company  is  installing  in  its  new 
station  at  the  foot  of  East  Thirty-ninth  Street  a  generating 
plant  designed  by  the  company's  constructing  engineer,  Mr. 
John  Van  Vleck.  Each  of  the  sixteen  engines  to  be  em- 
ployed will  be  of  5200  horse-power,  working  up  to  8000. 
With  such  dimensions  arrive  new  economies.  If  the  de- 
signer sticks  to  the  same  forms  he  finds  that  the  contents  of 
a  boiler  and  the  power  of  an  engine  increase  as  the  cube  of 
their  lengths,  while  the  surfaces  injuriously  cooled  by  radi- 
ation and  conduction  increase  only  as  the  square  of  these 
lengths.  To  take  a  simple  case:  an  enlargement  to 
doubled  size  signifies  eightfold  increase  of  capacity  or 
power,  and  but  fourfold  augmentation  of  surface.' 

Economy,  instead  of  waste,  appears  in  other  directions. 
The  air  on  its  way  to  the  furnace  is  now  warmed  through 
a  considerable  range  of  temperature  by  being  exposed  in 
pipes  to  the  heated  gases  as  they  enter  the  chimney  from 
the  fire.  The  heat  thus  intercepted  was  formerly  thrown 
away.  Of  course,  this  interception  adds  a  little  to  the 
resistance  encountered  by  the  chimney  gases  as  they  es- 
cape to  the  outer  air.  Here,  too,  improvement  is  the  order 
of  thi-  day.  The  modern  builder,  instead  of  designing  a 
tall  chimney  of  the  old  pattern,  which  by  its  long  column  of 

1  The  law  of  volumes  and  surfaces  here  concerned  is  developed  ami  illus- 
trated  in  .-/  Class  in  Geometry,  l>y  George  lies.  New  York  and  Chicago, 
E.  1..  Kellogg  «.V  Co. 


HIGH    CHIMNEYS  DISAPPEARING     61 

heated  air  created  a  draught,  to-day  erects  a  low  chimney 
and  employs  a  fan  to  produce  a  draught,  which  is  much 
preferable.  In  the  first  place,  it  is  most  wasteful  to  warm 
air  simply  for  the  current  which  heat  sets  up  in  it ;  a  similar 
current  can  be  furnished  with  a  mere  fraction  of  the  same 
heat  applied  to  a  steam-engine  driving  a  blower.  Mechan- 
ical draught  has  many  advantages :  it  not  only  dispenses 
with  high  and  costly  chimneys,  but  it  is  easily  controlled  in 
bad  weather,  or  when  there  is  an  unusual  demand  for  power  ; 
it  enables  both  boiler  and  engine  to  be  reduced  in  dimen- 
sions;  inferior  fuels  of  low  cost  are  readily  consumed;  it 
prevents  smoke  ;  and  on  shipboard,  as  elsewhere,  it  lends 
itself  to  thorough  ventilation. 

For  a  good  many  years  mechanical  stokers  have  been 
devised  in  various  forms ;  they  are  steadily  coming  into 
favour  in  improved  and  economical  types,  completing  the 
modernisation  of  fuel-burning,  and  abolishing  a  most  op- 
pressive form  of  drudgery.  As  the  automatic  hopper, 
filled  with  fine  coal,  glides  to  and  fro  above  a  furnace  pro- 
vided with  moving  grate-bars,  we  behold  the  latest  term 
of  that  marvellous  advance  which  began  when  the  savage 
first  laboriously  kindled  a  blaze  to  warm  his  hands  or  to 
cook  his  breakfast. 

For  twenty  years,  or  thereabout,  the  steam-engine  has 
been  confronted  with  a  rival  in  the  form  of  the  gas-engine, 
for  centuries  prophesied  in  the  common 
gun.      In  the   gun   a   charge   of   powder        The  Gas-engine, 
takes  fire  and   is  for  the  most  part  sud- 
denly transformed   into  gases   of  enormous  tension.     The 
gunpowder  is  at  once  the  fuel  and  the  expanding  medium 
whose   motion   wings   the  bullet.      In   effect,  therefore,  the 
gun-barrel  is  both  a  furnace  and  a  cylinder;   the  bullet  is 
virtually  a  piston  driven  with  an  efficiency  far  exceeding 
that  of  any  other  form  of  heat-engine.      The  gas-engine,  at 
moderate   and   safe  pressures,  copies   all  this.      Within   its 


62  MOTIVE    POWER    FROM    FIRE 

cylinder  the  gas  is  both  fuel  and  expanding  agent.  Because 
it  has  no  special  furnace  or  boiler  its  construction  and  work- 
ing are  much  simpler  than  those  of  the  ordinary  steam- 
engine.  In  its  recent  and  much  improved  forms  the 
gas-engine  has  been  built  in  sizes  capable  of  exerting  750 
horse-power.  For  the  same  quantity  of  applied  heat  it 
yields  more  work  than  the  ordinary  steam-engine,  but  as  gas 
usually  costs  more  than  other  fuel,  the  balance  of  advan- 
tage remains  in  most  cases  with  the  older  apparatus. 
Machines  for  generating  fuel-gas  from  coal  have  been 
designed  by  Dowson,  Benier,  Taylor,  and  others;  when 
operations  are  on  a  large  scale  their  use  is  decidedly  gain- 
ful. At  Jersey  City  the  Erie  Railroad  Company  installed 
at  its  shops,  during  the  summer  of  1899,  a  Taylor  producer 
gas  plant  designed  and  built  by  R.  D.  Wood  &  Co. 
of  Philadelphia.  This  plant  records  the  consumption  of 
but  i.i  pounds  of  rice  coal,  of  low  price,  per  horse-power 
hour,  while  the  average  duty  of  the  engines  is  22  per  cent, 
of  the  theoretical  value  of  the  fuel  consumed.1 

The  constant  improvement  of  the  gas-engine  and  the 
gas-producer  does  not  mean  the  superseding  of  the  steam- 
engine,  but  only  that  the  engineer  has  a  new  choice  in  the 
production  of  motive  power ;  he  may  have  preferences,  but 
no  exclusions.  Where  he  has  work  to  do  on  a  small  scale, 
or  of  an  intermittent  character,  he  may  find  it  better  to 
buy  illuminating-gas  for  use  in  his  cylinders,  than  to  keep 
up  steam  in  a  boiler  called  upon  during  only  a  fraction  of 
the  day.  Often,  too,  the  availability  of  exhaust-steam  for 
heating  a  building,  as  is  often  required  in  the  Northern 
States  and  Canada,  turns  the  scale  in  favour  of  a  strain 
plant  of  familiar  type.  Each  case  has  to  be  studied  in  the 
light  of  its  peculiar  circumstances. 

In  one  important  department  the  gas-engine  is  creating 
a  lidd  for  itself  —  by  working  with  gases  formerly  thrown 
1  Engineering  and  Mining  Journal,  Novembei  4,  1S99. 


PROFIT    INSTEAD    OF    LOSS  63 

wastefully  into  the  air.  In  iron-making  there  is  a  huge 
output  of  blast-furnace  gases  now  beginning  to  be  utilised 
for  the  production  of  power  at  nominal  cost.  Experiments 
at  the  Cockerill  Works,  Seraing,  Belgium,  prove  that  the 
heavier  particles  of  dust  carried  in  the  gases  are  quickly- 
deposited  by  a  simple  arrangement  of  passages  and  collect- 
ing-chambers. There  remains  only  a  light,  impalpable 
dust,  which  goes  through  the  engines  so  rapidly  as  to  do 
no  harm  whatever. 

When  a  savage  softened  or  melted  a  lump  of  copper  in  a 
blaze,  his  act  was  one  of  direction  rather  than  of  execution ; 
to   have  warmed  the  metal  by  repeated 
blows  would  have  been  a  toilsome  and         The  Growth  of 
unrewarded  task,  while  to  place  the  cop-  initiative, 

per  in  the  flame  and  duly  to  remove  it, 
was  labour  of  an  unexacting  and  most  fruitful  kind.  So,  too, 
when  heat-engines  of  constantly  improved  types  came  into 
the  mines,  the  shops  and  factories  of  the  world,  and  were 
last  of  all  adapted  to  transportation,  the  work  that  a 
skilful  man  could  direct  became  immensely  greater  and 
bolder  than  the  task  he  could  perform  by  dint  of  exerting 
his  own  muscles.  In  this  passing  to  more  and  more  of 
initiative  consists  an  important  phase  of  civilisation,  as  we 
shall  perceive  in  future  chapters  no  less  clearly  than  here. 

As  heat-engines  of  one  type  and  another  grow  in  econ-' 
omy,  each  adapted  to  the  circumstances  of  its  case,  by  just 
so  much  do  they  maintain  their  ground  against  water- 
powers,  except  when  these  are  easily  available  and  con- 
stant. Fuels,  for  a  reason  which  will  be  manifest  as  we 
proceed,  seem  to  be  destined  long  to  retain  their  predom- 
inance as  sources  of  motive  power.  Every  improvement, 
therefore,  in  heat-engines  is  of  prime  importance  to  the 
electrician,  whose  labours  we  shall  presently  consider;  it  is 
commonly  with  the  production  of  motive  power  that  his 
tasks   beuin. 


CHAPTER   VI 

THE    BANISHMENT    OF    HEAT 

WE  have  thus  far  considered  the  gifts  of  fire  as  directly 
applied  to  warming  a  habitation,  to  boiling  a  kettle 
or  a   still,  to  yielding   light,   in  fusing  metals,  in  smelting 

their  ores,  in  propelling  machinery.      We 
Heat  Produces  Cold,    are    now    briefly   to    glance   at    the    skill 

which  builds  an  apparatus,  and  dividing 
the  heat  within  it  into  two  parts,  obliges  one  of  these  parts 
to  expel  the  other.  In  this  remarkable  branch  of  art,  the 
most  striking,  and  perhaps  the  final,  developments  have 
taken  place  within  recent  months,  but  the  first  steps  were 
familiar  enough  centuries  ago. 

It  is  altogether  likely  that  in  the  day  of  Columbus  ice  formed 
on  peaks  such  as  those  of  the  Sierra  Nevada,  near  Granada 
in  Spain,  would  be  carried  to  the  sweltering  valley  beneath, 
for  the  refreshment  of  king  and  court.  Here  would  come 
into  play  the  virtues  of  non-conductors  such  as  gypsum  or 
ashes  —  the  very  material  that  would  preserve  the  heat  oi 
an  ember  prolonging  the  life  of  an  ice-block.  Whether 
heat  is  to  be  kept  in  or  kept  out,  a  non- conducting  cloak  is 
of  equal  service.  Few  capitals  have  so  happy  a  site  as 
Granada,  and,  therefore,  other  means  of  lowering  high 
temperatures  than  by  ice  have  been  in  request  from  re- 
mote antiquity.  Of  these  means  the  commonest  has  be<  n 
the  mimic  breeze  blown  by  slaves  toiling  at  huge  fans  or 

64 


THE   CHILL   OF   EVAPORATION        65 

overhead  curtains,  as  in  modern  India.  Here,  for  all  who 
cared  to  think  about  it,  was  a  hint  as  to  the  equivalence  of 
hard  work  with  an  effect  on  temperature.  Here,  also, 
was  a  plain  lesson  that  to  promote  evaporation  from  the 
skin,  or  other  surface,  is  to  produce  a  cooling  effect. 

Usually  there  is  a  flow  of  heat  from  surrounding  bodies 
to  a  liquid  as  it  evaporates  at  nearly  the  temperature  of 
common  air,  and  when  the  evaporation  is  slow  this  cool- 
ing is  not  readily  detected.  But  when  the  evaporation  is 
rapid,  and  the  body  from  which  it  takes  place  is  isolated, 
it  is  easy  to  remark  a  decided  fall  in  temperature.  If 
a  porous  jar  filled  with  water  is  hung  by  a  thread  in  a 
quick  draught  of  air,  the  heat  demanded  by  the  evapo- 
rating process  is  withdrawn  solely  from  the  jar,  which 
accordingly  soon  exhibits  a  chill.  Indeed,  the  familiar 
misfortune  of  "  catching  cold  "  in  a  similar  draught  has 
points  of  resemblance  to  the  elaborate  artificial  refrigera- 
tion which  to-day  yields  ice  by  the  car-load. 

All  liquids  at  all  temperatures  tend  to  evaporate,  and  the 
search  of  the  investigator  has  been  directed  to  ascertaining 
which    liquids    evaporate    most    rapidly. 
Among  these  is  alcohol.     If  a  few  drops     The  Evaporation  of 
are    allowed   to   fall    on    the    hand    they  .  Liquids, 

turn  to  vapour  so  quickly  as  to  excite  a 
sensation  of  cold,  giving  us  our  first  lesson  in  the  refriger- 
ating value  of  such  a  liquid  when  free  to  change  to  vapour. 
If  alcohol  cost  as  little  as  water,  and  if  its  fumes  were  not 
inflammable,  it  would  be  a  capital  refrigerating  medium. 
But  anhydrous  ammonia  is,  from  every  point  of  view,  the 
most  preferable  of  all  liquids  as  a  means  of  procuring 
artificial  cold.  It  tends  to  evaporate  so  rapidly  at  common 
atmospheric  pressure  that  it  quickly  chills  itself  in  the  pro- 
cess. Of  course  this  evaporation  is  swifter  still  when  an 
exhausting-pump  reduces  the  atmospheric  pressure;  and 
quite  as  important  is  the  fact  that,  at  comparatively  mod- 


66 


THE    BANISHMENT    OF    HEAT 


erate  pressures,  this  ammonia  vapour  is  readily  reduced  to 
the  liquid  form  once  more.  A  simple  refrigerating  ap- 
paratus is  shown  in  Fig.  16.  It  consists  in  a  steam-engine, 
C,  whose  first  business  is  to  reduce  the  pressure  from  the 


^'".^■'■"'fl'Tr"! 


Fig.  16. 

Refrigerator,  Frick  Co.,  Waynesboro,  Pa. 
A,  ammonia;  B,  brine;   C,  engine,  by  turns  exhauster  and  condenser. 

surface  of  the  liquid  ammonia  A.  The  resulting  chill  of 
rapid  evaporation  is  communicated  to  B,  a  tank  filled  with 
brine — which  remains  liquid  at  temperatures  below  the 
freezing-point  of  water.  Pans  of  water  exposed  to  pipes 
of  chilled  brine  are  readily  congealed  to  ice.  As  the  sec- 
ond half  of  its  recurrent  task  the  steam-engine  withdraws 
the  ammonia  vapour  to  a  chamber  of  its  own,  where  it  is 
compressed  again  to  liquidity  and  returned  to  its  original 
reservoir,  care  being  taken  that  the  heat  generated  in  this 
compression  is  carried  off  by  water  (lowing  over  the  appa- 
ratus. 

Thus,  since  heat  is  transformable  into  motive  power,  and 
moth  e  power  can  force  ammonia  to  chill  itself,  a  ton  of  coal, 
according  to  quality,  can  make  six  to  ten  tons  of  ice  in 
competition  with  the  frosts  of  winter.  Because  their  prod- 
uct is  pure,  refrigerating-machines  are  finding  more  and 
more  favour  in  cities  once  supplied  exclusively  with  ice  from 


COLD   HAS   HIGH    VALUE  67 

ponds  and  streams.  At  another  point  does  art  here  super- 
sede nature.  The  ammonia-machine  stands  for  the  type 
of  apparatus  which  depends  upon  the  evaporation  of 
liquids  low  in  boiling-point,  the  process  usually  taking 
place  in  a  receiver  exhausted  as  thoroughly  as  possible. 

Cold,  so  singular  an  issue  of  heat,  has  high  commercial 
value.      Apples   and    grapes    harvested    in    September  and 
October  are  sent   from  the  cold-storage 
warehouse  to  the  table  in  perfect  order      The  Market  value 
as  late  as  May.     The  fruit-grower  and  of  Cold- 

the  dairyman  have  a  new  opportunity  to 
choose  the  time  for  marketing  their  products.  Refriger. 
ator  steamships  now  carry  Canadian  butter  and  New 
Zealand  meat  in  vast  quantities  to  the  markets  of  Great 
Britain.  Within  the  shorter  distances  traversed  by  the 
railroads  of  the  United  States,  the  strawberries  of  Oregon 
find  their  way  unbruised  and  fresh  to  St.  Paul  and  Chicago, 
while  the  kitchen-gardeners  of  Florida  and  Louisiana  look 
for  their  customers  in  New  England  and  New  York.  There 
is  more  in  all  this  than  the  mere  purveying  of  luxuries  :  there 
is  an  increase  of  individual  health  and  strength  when  a 
national  bill  of  fare  is  at  once  diversified  and  made  more 
wholesome.  Whereas  heat  in  the  hands  of  early  man 
served  to  multiply  his  foods  by  primitive  methods  of 
roasting,  of  smoking,  of  preservation  in  grease, — as  pem- 
mican, — the  later  applications  of  heat  by  the  modern  en- 
gineer are  of  comparable  service  in  multiplying  the  food 
resources  of  the  civilised  world.  Cold  storage  and  quick 
transportation  supplement  in  remarkable  fashion  every 
device  that  has  sprung  from  the  aboriginal  grill  and  kettle. 

Refrigerating  machinery  bids  fair  before  many  years  to 
add  still  other  blessings  to  those  we  owe  to  steam.  W7hat 
is  to  prevent  the  cooling  of  summer  air  in  dwellings,  offices, 
and  stores  by  apparatus  sending  currents  of  cold  water 
through  pipes  such  as  we  fill  with  hot  water  in  winter? 


68         THE   BANISHMENT   OF   HEAT 

Of  course,  the  details  of  service  would  have  to  be  totally 
reversed — the  current  starting  from  the  top  of  a  building 
instead  of  from  the  basement,  the  coils  being  fastened  to 
the  ceiling  in  place  of  to  the  floor. 

The  cold  required  in  the  cold-storage  room  is  usually  a 

degree  or  two  above  the  freezing-point  of  water.     A  much 

lower   temperature   displays   effects    un- 

u.,„n.n,««inn=nf    known  till  within  the  past  decade.      We 

New  Depressions  01  r 

Temperature.  have  observed  how  ammonia,  as  used  in 

ice-making,  is  readily  brought  from  the 
gaseous  to  the  liquid  form  under  pressure.  Other  com- 
pounds there  are  which  demand  for  the  same  transforma- 
tion lower  temperatures  and  severer  pressures;  and  these 
when  allowed  to  evaporate  freely  become  chilled  in  extraor- 
dinary degrees.  And  here  we  come  to  one  of  the  parti- 
tion-walls that  have  been  pierced  by  the  modern  physicist, 
with  new  proof  that  the  realm  of  nature  is  one  and  con- 
tinuous, however  convenient  it  may  be  to  imagine  fences 
here  and  there  so  as  to  divide  her  territory  into  governable 
provinces.  A  century  ago  it  seemed  that  aeriform  bodies 
might  with  propriety  be  divided  into  two  quite  distinct 
classes  —  vapours,  such  as  steam,  and  gases,  such  as  oxygen. 
Faraday  did  much  to  correct  this  assumption:  he  showed 
that  carbonic  dioxide,  chlorine,  and  man)-  other  gases  are 
condensable  into  liquids;  but  nitrogen,  oxygen,  and  hydro- 
gen resisted  his  utmost  skill. 

A  new  distinction  was  thus  introduced — between  gases 
condensable  and  gases  "permanent."  We  are  now  to 
observe  the  steps  by  which  it  is  proved  that  no  gas  is 
permanent,  that  no  line  of  demarcation  can  he  drawn  be- 
tween such  a  vapour  as  common  steam  and  so  resistant  a 
l;;is  as  hydrogen.  This  gas,  together  with  oxygen  and 
nitrogen,  .ait  indeed  nothing  else  than  tin-  vapours  of  liquids 
which  boil  at  extremely  low  temperatures,  and  which 
solidify    at    temperatures    a    little    lower.      The   mind  is  ac- 


OXYGEN    LIQUEFIED  69 

customed  to  associate  boiling,  as  in  the  case  of  water,  with 
a  considerable  degree  of  heat ;  we  have  to  pause  a  moment 
to  comprehend  that  the  boiling  of  liquid  oxygen,  nitrogen, 
and  hydrogen  takes  place  at  temperatures  compared  with 
which  those  of  the  arctic  circle  are  torrid.  The  feat  of 
producing  hydrogen  in  solid  form  marks  the  highest 
triumph  of  experimental  resources,  and  has  been  arrived 
at  only  through  a  patient  series  of  approaches. 

In  preliminary  investigations  it  was  found  that  ammonia 
at  a  pressure  of  1 1  5  atmospheres  boils  at  —  3$°  C.  ;  nitrous 
oxide,  at  a  pressure  of  75  atmospheres,  boils  at.  — 870  C. ; 
and  ethylene,  at  a  pressure  of  5 1  atmospheres,  boils  at 
—  1020  C.  Here  the  man  of  experiment  is  at  once  a  chem- 
ist and  a  mechanic  ;  his  chemical  compounds  enable  him  to 
descend  from  one  level  of  refrigeration  to  a  lower  one, 
while,  from  first  to  last,  it  is  of  vital  importance  that  his 
cylinders  be  of  the  utmost  strength,  and  his  pistons  tight 
and  true.  In  this  difficult  field  M.  Cailletet  of  Chatillon- 
sur-Seine,  in  1877,  succeeded  in  liquefying  oxygen  and 
carbonic  monoxide.  Three  weeks  later,  by  a  distinct  appa- 
ratus, M.  Pictet  of  Geneva  liquefied  oxygen.  Six  years 
afterward  MM.  Wroblewski  and  Olsewski  of  Cracow,  by 
original  methods,  liquefied  oxygen,  nitrogen,  and  carbonic 
monoxide.  Clearly  there  is  more  than  one  point  of  attack- 
in  reducing  to  liquid  form  the  gases  long  deemed  "  per- 
manent." Each  successive  experiment  but  serves  to 
verify  the  dictum  of  Faraday  and  Andrews  to  the  ef- 
fect that  no  matter  how  severe  the  pressure  to  which  a 
gas  is  subjected,  that  pressure  will  not  avail  for  its  lique- 
faction unless  its  temperature  is  lowered  to  a  "  critical  " 
degree. 

The  most  remarkable  recent  work  in  refrigeration  is 
that  of  Professor  James  Dewar,  of  the  Royal  Institution 
in  London.  The  feat  of  liquefying  oxygen  by  a  succes- 
sion   of   approaches   to    its    critical    temperature    has   been 


7o         THE   BANISHMENT   OF   HEAT 

thus  described  by  him,  in  an  interview  which  appeared  in 
McClure's  Magazine,  November,  1893: 

The  process  of  liquefying  oxygen,  briefly  speaking,  is  this  :  Into 
the  outer  chamber  of  that  double  compressor  I  introduce,  through 
a  pipe,  liquid  nitrous  oxide  gas,  under  a  pressure  of  about  1400 
pounds  to  the  square  inch.  I  then  allow  it  to  evaporate  rapidly, 
and  thus  obtain  a  temperature  around  the  inner  chamber  of 
—  900  C.  Into  this  cooled  inner  chamber  I  introduce  liquid 
ethylene,  which  is  a  gas  at  ordinary  temperatures,  under  a 
pressure  of  1N00  pounds  to  the  square  inch.  When  the  inner 
chamber  is  full  of  ethylene,  its  rapid  evaporation  under  exhaustion 
reduces  the  temperature  to  — 1450  C.  Running  through  this 
inner  chamber  is  a  tube  containing  oxygen  gas  under  a  pressure 
of  750  pounds  to  the  square  inch.  The  critical  point  of  oxygen 
gas  —  that  is,  the  point  above  which  no  amount  of  pressure  will 
reduce  it  to  a  liquid— is  — 1 1 50  C,  but  this  pressure,  at  the  tem- 
perature of  — 1450  C,  is  amply  sufficient  to  cause  it  to  liquefy 
rapidly. 

In  May,  1 898,  Professor  Dewar,  by  the  use  of  liquid 
oxygen,  succeeded  in  liquefying  hydrogen,  producing  a 
liquid  having  but  one-fourteenth  the  specific  gravity  <>f 
water;  this  exploit  brought  him  within  210  of  the  abso- 
lute zero  of  centigrade.  He  afterward  reduced  the  liquid 
to  solid  form,  attaining  a  temperature  estimated  at  four 
to  five  degrees  lower.  Faraday  and  other  investigators 
of  an  earlier  day  surmised  that  hydrogen,  when  solidified, 
would  prove  to  be  a  metal;  now  that  the  feat  of  solidifica- 
tion has  been  accomplished,  hydrogen  astonishes  the  phys- 
icist by  displaying  itself  as  non-metallic. 

In    feats    much    less    audacious,    refrigeration    manifests 

itself    every   day   in   our    mines    and   quarries.     We   have 

already-  glanced  at  ice- making  as  due  to 

Air  compressed,  then    the  spontaneous  evaporation  of  a  liquid, 

Expanded.  such   as  ammonia,   of   low    boiling-point. 

Let     us    now    look    at    the    drills    of    the 

miner   and    the    cpianyman    as    driven    by    compressed    air. 

At  headquarters,  air  for  their  supply  is  compressed  to  a 


THE    CHILL    OF   EXPANDING    AIR      71 


Fig.  17. 
A,   air    at    ordinary    pres- 
sure ;    B,   air    heated   by 
compression  ;   C,  air  then 
cooled  by  expansion. 


pressure  of  200  pounds  to  the  square  inch,  or  thereabout. 
In  the  process  there  is  a  marked  evolution  of  heat — which 
is  carried  off  by  a  stream  of  water  surrounding  the  air- 
pipes.  As  the  compressed  air  expands  in  driving  its 
pistons,  it  falls  so  much  in  tem- 
perature that  it  would  be  easy  to 
freeze  water  by  its  means.  This 
chill  of  expanding  air  as  it  pushes 
a  piston  is  one  and  the  same  with 
the  lowering  of  temperature  in  a 
steam-cylinder  as  its  contents  im- 
pel the  piston  of  an  engine.  The 
heat  which  in  each  case  disappears 
is  precisely  equal  to  the  amount 
which  the  piston -stroke  would  gen- 
erate, were  it  employed,  let  us  say, 
in  rubbing  iron  plates  together  (Fig. 

17)- 

We  are  here  observing  the  conversion  of  heat  motion 
into  mechanical  motion  ;  it  is  very  much  as  if  we  beheld  a 
target  moving  before  a  storm  of  fine  shot.  Heat  consists 
in  the  motion  of  molecules,  and  as  they  part  with  much  of 
their  momentum  in  the  act  of  impelling  a  heavy  piston, 
their  loss  of  motion  is  declared  in  their  perceptible  fall  in 
temperature.  When  a  compressed-air  motor  is  at  work 
this  fall  of  temperature  is  evident  to  the  touch  ;  in  the  case 
of  a  working  steam-cylinder  the  effect  requires  a  ther- 
mometer for  its  detection,  since  the  steam  even  when  low- 
ered in  temperature  is  still  very  hot.  The  cooling  effect 
derivable  from  the  expansion  of  compressed  air  underlies 
the  self-intensifying  process  of  refrigeration  now  to  be  de- 
scribed. 

In  many  of  its  chapters,  the  history  of  invention  displays 
an  advance  from  the  roundabout  to  the  direct,  as  we  have 
seen  in  the  substitution  of  the  steam-turbine  for  the  com- 


72  THE   BANISHMENT   OF   HEAT 

pound  engine.      Recent  modes  of  refrigeration  offer  a  like 
illustration.     For  some  years   the  plan  was  to  employ   a 
series  of  chemical  compounds,  each  with 
Liquid  Air.  a  lower  boiling-point  than  its  predeces- 

sor in  the  process,  and  all  troublesome 
and  hazardous  in  manipulation.  A  better  method  has 
been  developed  by  keeping  to  simple  air  from  first  to 
last,  as  in  the  apparatus  of  Dr.  Linde,  of  Dr.  Hampson, 
and  of  Mr.  Charles  E.  Tripler. 

As  the  Tripler  machine  does  its  work  on  a  bolder  scale 
than  either  of  the  others,  let  its  operation  be  briefly  out- 
lined: Air  is  first  compressed  to  65  pounds  pressure  to 
the  square  inch  ;  through  a  second  pump  this  pressure  is 
exalted  to  400  pounds,  and  with  a  third  pump  the  pressure 
is  carried  to  2500  pounds.  After  each  compression  the 
air  Mows  through  jacketed  pipes,  where  it  is  cooled  by  a 
stream  of  water.  At  the  third  condensation  a  valve,  the 
secret  of  whose  construction  Mr.  Tripler  keeps  to  himself, 
permits  part  of  the  compressed  air  to  flow  into  a  pipe  sur- 
rounding the  tube  through  which  the  remainder  is  flowing. 
This  act  of  expansion  severely  chills  the  imprisoned  air, 
which  at  last  discharges  itself  in  liquid  form — much  as 
water   does   from    an   ordinary  city    faucet. 

It  has  been  said  that  Professor  Dewar,  in  producing  liquid 
hydrogen,  has  come   within   210  of  the  absolute  zero  ol 
temperature.      It    may  be   asked,    How 
Absolute  Zero.         do  physicists   know   where  to  place   this 
point     in    their    scale?       The    answer    is 
that   all    gases   are   doubled    in    elastic    force  when,  without 
change  of  volume,  their  temperature  is  increased  from  o°  to 
2  730  C.    Assuming  the  same  law  to  hold  good  from  o    down- 
ward,—  that  for  every  degree  of  refrigeration  we  diminish 
its  elastic  force,  or  the  molecular  motion  which  produces 
it,  by    ■!  ;  of  what  it  possesses  at  o°,  —  then  at  a  tempera- 
ture of  27$°  below  zero  the  gas  would  cease  to  have  any 


THE  WONDERS  OF  EXTREME  COLD   73 

elastic  force  whatever.  The  motion  to  which  elastic  force 
is  due  having  vanished,  we  reach  what  is  called  the  abso- 
lute zero  of  temperature.  We  have  withdrawn  from  the 
gas  just  as  much  heat  as  we  added  to  it  when  we  warmed 
it  from  o°  to  27 30. 

Degree  for  degree  the  deprivation  of  heat  works  changes 
more  remarkable  than  does  addition  of  heat  within  familiar 
bounds.       When    a    substance    is    once 
warmed    to   the   gaseous   state,  we    may  Discoveries, 

heat  it  as  much  as  we  plt-ase,  it  remains 
gaseous  still.  But  when  a  gas  or  vapour  is  so  cool  as  to  be 
near  condensation  into  liquid  form,  the  change  wrought  by 
a  moderate  degree  of  refrigeration  is  very  marked,  and  a 
totally  new  series  of  properties  rises  to  view ;  with  another 
and  still  moderate  cooling,  the  substance  becomes  a  solid 
displaying  a  totally  novel  aspect  from  the  mechanical  and 
physical  standpoints.  The  difference  between  a  gas  at 
low  temperature  and  the  same  gas  highly  heated  is  a  differ- 
ence of  degree ;  the  distinction  between  a  gas,  a  liquid,  and 
a  solid  is  a  distinction  of  kind. 

The  alterations  of  quality  which  display  themselves 
under  the  new  refrigeration  are  most  significant.  Iron,  in 
falling  from  ioo°  C.  to  the  temperature  of  liquid  air, 
— 191  °,  gains  fifteen  times  in  electrical  conductivity;  hence 
it  is  believed  that  at  absolute  zero,  iron  and  other  metals 
would  be  perfect  conductors.  Professor  Elihu  Thomson 
thinks  that  it  may  be  profitable  to  employ  intense  cold  as  a 
means  of  increasing  the  efficiency  of  electrical  transmission 
to  long  distances.  Why  not  also  in  improving  the  economy 
of  dynamos  and  motors,  advantaged  as  these  are  by  com- 
pact shape?  Carbon  is  a  singular  exception  to  the  general 
rule  that  cold  increases  conductivity ;  at  extremely  low 
temperatures  its  resistance  is  extreme,  and  steadily  dimin- 
ishes as  its  temperature  rises.  Subjected  to  the  new  re- 
frigeration, lead  gains  enormously  in  tenacity,  ice  becomes 


74  THE    BANISHMENT   OF    HEAT 

brittle,  and  photographic  effects  slow  down  and  all  but 
cease;  alcohol,  chloroform,  and  other  important  com- 
pounds become  solid,  and  in  so  doing  rid  themselves  of 
admixtures. 

A  wide  variety  of  substances  change  colour  when  reduced 
from  glowing  heat  to  common  temperatures,  the  metals, 
notably.  Just  as  decided  is  the  change  of  hue  when  many 
chemical  compounds  are  brought  from  ordinary  tempera- 
tures to  extreme  cold.  Red  oxide  of  mercury  turns  yel- 
low, sulphur  and  potassium  bichromate  turn  white.  A 
solution  of  iodine  in  alcohol  becomes  colourless;  so  does 
ferric  chloride,  which  is  a  deep  red  under  ordinary  circum- 
stances. A  new  chapter  in  the  story  of  heat  is  thus  being 
written  day  by  day,  and  one  of  the  most  astonishing,  be- 
cause until  within  a  few  years  the  appliances  for  the  for- 
cible expulsion  of  heat  were  not  perfected. 

A    thought    often    in    the    mind    of    Professor   J.    Clerk- 
Maxwell    was    the    "cross-fertilisation    of    the    sciences." 
He  was  wont   to  point  out  how   a   new 
Unexpected  Aid.        discovery  <>r  invention  bore  fruit  in  the 
most  unexpected  quarters,  and  gave  aid 
in  emergencies   that   would  seem  without   hope.      Who  at 
fust   view  would  suppose   that   the  new   extremes  of  cold 
would    afford   the    closest    known    approach    to   a   perfect 
vacuum?     Yet   such  is  the  fact,  with  all 
that  it  means  for  the  advancement  of  in- 
candescent lighting  and  other  branches  i  >f 
FlG    l8  electric   art.      By    dipping   the   end   of   a 

Varunm  obtained  by  closed  bulb  filled  with  air  into  liquid  hv- 
freezing  air  by  drogen,  the  air  is  quickly  condensed  at 
"lu"  the  bottom  in  solid  form  (Fig.  l8).      The 

bulb  is  so  shaped  that  this  condensation  take-  place  in  a 
detachable  part,  />';  sealed  off  by  the  flame  of  a  blow-pipe, 
at  N,  the  remainder  of  the  bulb  furnishes  a  vacuum  which 
is  so  nearly  perfect  that  an  electrical  charge  cannot  pass 


DISTILLING    BELOW    ZERO  75 

through  it.  This  nearest  of  all  approaches  to  complete 
exhaustion  is  due  to  the  skill  of  Professor  Dewar.  A  bulb 
thus  emptied  by  utmost  cold  is  an  example  among  thou- 
sands that  troop  before  the  observer,  all  disclosing  the 
threads  which  bind  utilities,  apparently,  at  the  first  thought, 
too  remote  from  each  other  for  any  alliance.  It  is  these 
cases  which  bring  permutation  from  the  clouds  of  mathe- 
matical theory  to  the  solid  earth  of  scientific  evidence. 

In  another  unlooked-for  affiliation  an  old  use  of  heat 
teaches  a  lesson  to  the  new  extreme  of  cold.  For  ages 
the  chemist  has  employed  fractional  distillation  as  one  of 
his  most  useful  methods.  To  take  a  modern  instance : 
Petroleum,  as  it  flows  from  a  well,  is  slowly  raised  in  tem- 
perature until  the  lightest  of  its  naphthas  is  driven  off  by 
heat.  When  that  operation  is  at  an  end,  the  temperature 
is  slowly  raised  a  little  more,  then  another  naphtha,  not 
quite  so  volatile  as  the  first,  is  separated,  and  so  on  with  a 
succession  of  hydrocarbons  till  at  last  a  heavy  oil,  useful, 
perhaps,  as  a  lubricant  for  heated  machinery,  remains  alone 
in  the  still.  Who  at  the  first  blush  would  suppose  that 
such  a  process  as  this  would  bear  a  hint  for  Mr.  Tripler, 
working  as  he  does  at  ultra-arctic  temperatures?  But  so 
it  is.  The  gases  on  which  he  exerts  his  skill  have  their 
boiling-points  just  as  oils  and  water  have  theirs,  and  by 
carefully  graduating  his  temperatures  he  can  effect  separa- 
tions every  whit  as  important  as  those  by  the  old-time  frac- 
tional still.  The  boiling-point  of  nitrogen  is  about  70 
C.  below  that  of  oxygen.  When  liquid  air  stands  in  a 
trough  and  is  slowly  raised  in  temperature,  its  nitrogen 
becomes  gaseous  first,  leaving  behind  it  a  mixture  which 
from  moment  to  moment  grows  richer  in  oxygen — a  sub- 
stance of  especial  value  in  the  arts  when  it  can  be  secured 
by  itself,  or  with  small  admixture.  On  the  same  principle, 
Professor  Ramsay  has  performed  an  astonishing  feat :  from 
a  vessel  containing  a  liquid  mostly  argon  he  has  obtained 


76         THE    BANISHMENT   OF   HEAT 

two  new  elements,  neon  and  xenon,  which,  from  their 
higher  boiling-points,  successively  remained  behind  after 
the  argon  had  evaporated. 

Alloys,  so  puzzling  in  other  of  their  properties,  do  not 
improve  in   electrical    conductivity    under    refrigeration    in 
anything    like     the    same     measure    as 
Anomalies.  simple    metals.      At    this    point    a    con- 

trast is  suggested  between  the  studies  of 
the  man  of  science  and  those  of  the  man  of  law.  Juris- 
prudence in  its  consideration  of  the  conflict  of  laws  has 
a  department  of  more  than  common  interest  to  the  layman. 
A  citizen  of  Kansas,  let  us  suppose,  is  permitted  by  a 
United  States  statute  to  do  a  certain  act,  while  a  law  of 
his  own  State  forbids  him  to  do  it  under  penalty.  From 
this  may  issue  a  prolonged  contest,  simply  because  the 
legislators  of  the  nation  and  those  of  the  State  have  not 
worked  in  harmony — because  the  laws  of  one,  or  both,  do 
not  express  justice. 

The  man  of  science,  like  the  man  of  law,  has  brought 
before  him  many  an  anomaly;  but,  unlike  the  judge  or  the 
advocate,  he  knows  that  the  contradictions  he  studies  are 
only  such  in  seeming:  he  feels  confident  that  nature  at  the 
core  is  in  agreement  with  herself.  Any  day,  he  believes, 
these  apparent  contradictions  may  be  resolved  into  cases 
of  detected  law,  not  simple  enough  to  disclose  itself 
to  aught  but  the  most  rigorous  analysis.  In  the  realm  ot 
heat  it  seems  that  certain  rules  of  radiation,  conduction, 
boiling-points,  and  the  like,  are  general,  not  universal.  In 
most  cases  they  act  as  it  alone;  in  a  few  cases  their  effect 
is  masked  by  causes  as  yet  not  understood.  Let  a  few 
cases  as  perplexing  as  that  of  the  alloys  under  refrigera- 
tion be  recounted:  Common  solder  has  a  lower  melting- 
point  than  any  of  its  ingredients.  Sulphur  fuses  at  1200 
('.  and  thickens  again  at  220°  C.  When  steel  is  heated 
and  dipped  into  cold  water  it  is  hardened;  the  same  treat- 


COLD   AS   VALUABLE   AS    HEAT        77 

ment  softens  copper.  While  almost  every  substance  ex- 
pands with  heat,  rubber  shrinks.  In  most  cases  electrical 
conductivity  is  impaired  by  increase  of  temperature,  yet 
a  carbon  pencil  rises  to  an  almost  threefold  augmentation 
of  conductivity  when  brought  to  incandescence  in  an  elec- 
tric lamp.  We  may  be  well  assured  that  when  these 
anomalies  are  resolved  the  explanations  will  bear  in  their 
train  other  difficulties  for  research  yet  more  subtile.  Science 
never  does  worthier  work  than  where,  as  here,  she  points 
to  her  own  unfinished  walls,  and  bids  the  student  as 
a  privilege  and  a  duty  to  supply  their  gaps  as  best  he 
may. 

Incalculable   as   the  value  of   heat   is   in    its    uncounted 
direct  applications,  it  is  quite  within  the  bounds  of  proba- 
bility that  many  of  these  uses  are  soon 
to  be  paralleled  or  outdone  by  the  very  The.Profitof 

banishment  of  heat.      Within  limits  long  Subtraction, 

ago  compassed,  cold  suspends  the  chem- 
ical changes  which  mean  the  decay  of  foods,  the  deteri- 
oration of  oils  or  of  many  other  compounds  important  in 
the  arts.  In  its  new  and  extreme  degrees,  refrigeration 
brings  to  the  liquid  and  even  to  the  solid  form  some  of  the 
prime  elements  of  chemical  industry.  When  oxygen,  ni- 
trogen, and  hydrogen  can  be  produced,  shipped,  and 
manipulated  in  as  compact  form  as  so  much  petroleum, 
and  almost  with  the  same  ease  and  safety,  a  new  era 
dawns  in  the  laboratory  and  the  workshop.  So  singular 
are  the  changes  of  properties  which  come  about  in  extreme 
refrigeration,  so  unexpected  are  its  disclosures,  that  the 
man  of  research  has  now  in  his  hands  a  power  every  whit 
as  fruitful  as  if  he  had  discovered  some  method  of  heating 
his  furnace  to  a  new  intensity. 

And  all  this  is  not  without  precedent  in  other  fields. 
Air  is  indispensable  in  almost  every  task  of  the  mechanic 
and  the  chemist,  but  mark  the  value  of  the  means  whereby 


78 


THK    BANISHMENT    OF    HEAT 


air  may  be  banished  from  a  boiler  or  a  still  —  affording  a 
new  range  of  working  to  the  refiner  of  sugar,  oil,  or  alcohol. 
On  a  vacuum  approximately  perfect  turns,  as  we 

shall  presently   sec,  the  success  of  an  important 

branch    of    electric    lighting.       In    the    insulation 

from  heat  of    vessels  containing  frozen  hydrogen 

and  similar  elements,  the  chief  part  is  played  by  a 

vacuum  between  the  container  and  an  outer  shell, 

Fig.  19.      both  of  glass;  in  the  absence  of  air  or  other  gases 

Dewar      there  are  no  currents    to  convey    heat   from    the 

holding      shell   to  the  vessel  separated  from  it  by  an  inch 

intensely     or  two  of  empty   space   (Fig.    19). 

And  to  pass  from  the  phenomena  of  heat  to 
those  of  light,  to  what  do  we  owe  the  whole 
world  of  colour  but  to  the  power  by  which  surfaces  select 
from  white  light  certain  of  its  component  rays,  reflecting 
the  remainder  to  the  eye?  Every  tint  and  hue  of  the 
chromatic   scale  is  a   gift   of  subtraction. 


cold 

li.iuids. 


CHAPTER   VII 

THE    HIGHER    TEACHINGS    OF    FIRE 

WHILE  fire  has  been  multiplying-  its  material  gifts  to 
man,  it  has  created  uncounted  objects  for  his  high- 
est curiosity.  In  refining  sugar  and  oil,  in  producing  acids, 
dyes,  and  chemicals  by  the  thousand,  in 
vulcanising  rubber,  in  making  gas  for  "What  is  Radiant  Heat? 
illumination,  flame  has  but  performed  its 
lower  services.  Its  loftier  incitement  has  lain  in  prompt- 
ing the  student  to  pass  from  act  to  agent,  to  ask,  What 
is  the  nature  of  heat,  what  medium  propagates  the  solar 
ray,  and  what  are  the  ties  between  heat  and  light  and  com- 
mon mechanical  work  ?  At  sunrise  all  the  rays  of  the  sun, 
luminous  and  thermal,  arrive  at  the  earth  together,  just  as 
all  the  sound-waves  of  an  orchestra,  multifarious  as  they 
are,  travel  in  company  from  the  instruments  to  the  ear. 
That  heat  and  light  are  twins  inseparable  has  often  meant 
loss  when  light  alone  has  been  in  request,  yet  there  has 
been  a  remarkable  extension  of  knowledge  of  heat  through 
study  of  light. 

First  came  Romer's  observations,  in  1676,  of  the  eclipse 
of  the  satellites  of  Jupiter,  establishing  the  velocity  of  light 
as  186,500  miles  a  second,  a  velocity,  of  course,  shared  by 
radiant  heat.  Romer's  computation,  substantially  con- 
firmed by  Bradley,  at  once  suggested,  What  medium  is 
it  that  transmits  motion  at  a  rate  so  prodigious  ?    Is  it  a  gas, 

79 


(So 


THE   HIGHER    TEACHINGS   OF   FIRE 


Fig.  2< 


a  corpuscular  rain,  or  an  ether — a  more  subtile  kind  of 
matter  than  visible  or  tangible  bodies,  and  supposed  t<> 
exist  throughout  all  space,  whether  occupied  by  ordinary 
matter  or  not?  Newton  lent  his  great  name  to  the  corpus- 
cular view.  Huygens  advanced  the  theory  of  undulations 
in  an  ether — now  universally  accepted  as  the  one  satisfac- 
tory explanation  of  the  facts. 

Young,  in  arguing  for  the  theory  of  Huygens,  drew  at- 
tention  to  a  common    experiment    with    water-waxes.      If 

from  two  centres  of  motion  two  series  of 

The  Argument  for      waves  circle  out,  wherever  a  crest  from 

Ether.  one  centre  meets  a  crest  from  the  other 

the  two  rise  to  a  doubled  height;  when 
a  crest  meets  a  trough,  one  cancels  the  other,  and  the  water 
at  that  point  is  at  rest  (Fig.  20).  He 
repeated  this  with  light  in  a  con- 
vincing manner.      By  simple  optical 

means  he  divided  a  beam  into  two 

Water-wave   in   dotted   out- 
parts,   one  part   half  a  wave-length      ]ine  neutralises  wave  in 

behind    the    other.     The    two,    after       continuous  outline,  pro- 
travelling  by  different  paths,  he  re-         ,luan-  level  surface" 
united   and   let   fall    upon    a   screen.       If   either   ray    were 
stopped,  the  other  shone  forth  upon  the  screen,  but  if  both 

were  allowed  to  pass,  the 
screen  at  regular  inter- 
vals 1  in. ime  dark.  Two 
portions  of  light  had 
destroyed  each  other 
through  the  coincidence 
oi  a  crest  and  a  trough, 
as  in  the  case  of  the 
water-waves  (Fig.  21). 
Young  from  this  concluded  that  light  must  be  merely  a 
motion,  and  not  a  substance;  for  how  could  a  substance 
be  thus  annihilated  ?     Nevertheless  it  is  held  that  the  ether 


Fig.  21. 
Intei  ference  <>f  light-waves. 


ETHER   DISCOVERED  81 

through  which  light  and  heat  take  their  way  is  a  substance, 
though  of  a  tenuity  so  extreme  as  to  be  next  to  nothing. 
Professor  de  Volson  Wood  computed  that  a  mass  of  it  as 
large  as  the  earth  would  weigh  but  1.7  pounds.  Lord 
Kelvin  tells  us  that  in  a  cubic  mile  of  it  surcharged  with 
sunshine  there  resides  but  20,000  foot-pounds  of  energy, 
no  more  than  the  equivalent  of  the  exertion  of  a  horse  dur- 
ing thirty-six  seconds. 

Within  the  limits  of  a  single  viewpoint  the  comparison 
of  gases  enables  us  to  approach  an  explanation  of  the 
ether.  Hydrogen,  which  is  about  one-sixteenth  as  tenu- 
ous as  oxygen,  transmits  sound  nearly  four  times  as  fast.  If 
we  can  imagine  a  gas  so  much  more  tenuous  than  hydrogen 
as  to  convey  motion  with  the  speed  of  light,  we  may  form 
an  idea  of  the  ether,  and  attempt,  at  least,  to  include  the 
ether  with  ordinary  matter  as  making  up  one  continu- 
ous scheme  of  things.  The  question  as  to  whether  ordi- 
nary matter  has  originated  from  ether  or  not  remains  to  be 
considered  by  the  inquirers  of  the  future. 

In  bringing  the  man  of  science  to  the  knowledge  of  ether, 
the  study  of  light  and  heat  has  borne  its  worthiest  fruit.  An 
incalculable  expansion  of  human  thought  has  attended  the 
proof  that  an  ocean  as  wide  as  the  universe  bathes  every 
particle  of  matter,  and  binds  it  to  every  other  with  bonds 
more  rigid  than  links  of  steel.  Ether,  unseen  and  unfelt, 
except  to  the  eye  and  grasp  of  reason,  explains  so  many 
phenomena  of  light  and  heat  as  to  be  deemed  not  less  real 
than  air  or  water.  And  the  laws  of  ethereal  motion  as 
manifested  in  the  rays  of  flame  have  prepared  the  phi- 
losopher to  study  electricity  aright.  Every  extension  of 
electrical  science  only  confirms  the  belief  in  that  universal 
medium  for  which  Huygens  and  Young  argued  when  the 
evidence  for  it  was  not  one-hundredth  part  as  weighty  as 
it  is  to-day.  To  formulate  a  theory  of  the  ether,  so  that 
from   the  simplest  assumptions   may  be   deduced   the  facts 


82      THE  HIGHER  TEACHINGS  OF  FIRE 

of  electricity,  magnetism,  and  optics,  is  the  chief  aim  of 
modern   physical    philosophy. 

Heat,  though   radiated   with   almost  infinite   velocity,  is 

conducted  with  extreme  slowness,  and  so  the  physicists  of 

the  eighteenth  century  clung  to  the  old 

Heat  Proved  to  be      notion  that  heat  is  a  material  substance, 

phlogiston  or  caloric,  which  a  body  may 

absorb  or  expel  much  as  a  sponge  takes 

in  or   gives   out  water.      This  error  was   dispelled    for  all 

time  by  the  masterly  experiments  of  Count  Rumford.      He 

noticed  that  much  heat  appeared  in  the  boring  of  cannon, 

and   repeating  the   operation   with  care,  he  found  that  by 

applying  mechanical  motion  indefinitely  he  could  produce 

corresponding    quantities    of    heat     indefinitely.      Plainly, 

what  could  be  thus  created  at  will  could  not  be  matter,  and 

the  equivalence  of  heat  and  mechanical  motion  was  forever 

established.      Lucretius,     eighteen    centuries    before,    had 

guessed   that   heat  is  nothing  but  the  swift  motion  of  the 

ultimate  particles  of  bodies.      But  as  only  he  discovers  who 

proves,  the  credit  of  the   mechanical  theory  of  heat  rests 

with  Count  Rumford. 

Persuaded  that  heat  is  motion,  physicists  soon  passed  to 
the  far-reaching  conception  that  all  other  phases  of  energy, 
electricity  and  the  rest,  are  also  motion.  An  inquiry 
which  at  first  concerned  itself  with  only  the  thermometer 
as  its  instrument  quickly  demanded  the  fullest  and  utmost 
resources  of  the  laboratory.  Thanks  to  Meyer,  llelmholtz, 
Joule,  and  Faraday,  it  was  demonstrated  beyond  cavil  that 
motion,  like  matter,  may  change  its  forms,  but  never  its 
quantity;  that,  eternal  in  its  essence,  it  can  neither  be  made 
from  nothing  nor  brought  to  naught;  that,  despite  all  its 
mutations,  nature  is  but  an  infinite  series  of  equations,  no 
two  of  them  different  by  so  much  as  an  atom  or  an  atom's 
one  gyrati<  >n. 

It  is  singular  how  a  modern   Investigator  will  repeat  an 


STOREHOUSES   OF   ENERGY  83 

experiment  that  dates  almost  from  the  dawn  of  human 
skill,  and  discover  a  significance  in  it  concealed  until  the 
hour  of  his  interrogation.  Ages  ago  the  savage  must  have 
remarked  that  the  hard  work  of  grinding  and  polishing 
stone  gave  rise  to  heat.  It  remained  for  James  Prescott 
Joule  of  Manchester,  as  recently  as  1843,  to  carry  forward 
by  a  decisive  step  the  experiments  which  had  begun  with 
the  savage  and  had  been  brought  to  a  new  meaning  by 
Count  Rumford.  Joule  set  himself  to  find  out  exactly  how 
much  heat  is  equivalent  to  a  given  amount  of  work.  He 
applied  sinking  weights  to  the  agitation  of  water,  and,  tak- 
ing elaborate  precautions  against  the  escape  of  heat,  he 
found  that  1390  pounds  in  descending  one  foot  could  raise 
the  temperature  of  a  pound  of  water  by  i°C.  Here  at  last 
was  rendered  an  accurate  account  of  the  enormous  debt 
due  to  the  ability  to  kindle  fire. 

Wood,  coal,  and  oil  are  among  the  most  generous  gifts 
of  nature;  without  them  not  only  would  man  be  poorer  in 
material  possessions,  but  also  in  the  skill 
and  intelligence  drawn  out  in  the  use  of  The  value  of  Fuels, 
fuels.  A  pound  of  carbon  is  no  bigger 
than  one's  fist,  and  yet,  if  all  the  heat  it  yields  in  burning 
could  be  applied  to  mechanical  toil,  it  would  do  as  much  as 
a  strong  labourer  in  a  week.  To  put  it  in  another  way,  if 
all  the  energy  contained  in  2.8  ounces  of  carbon  could  be 
converted  into  work  without  waste,  it  would  exert  one 
horse-power  for  an  hour.  Every  grain  beyond  2.8  ounces 
that  an  engine  demands  for  this  service  is  a  measure  of  its 
imperfection.  No  wonder,  then,  that  when  water-  or  wind- 
power  is  turned  to  the  warming  of  a  room,  the  cost  is,  as  a 
rule,  prohibitory.  To  get  as  much  heat  as  would  be 
thrown  out  from  the  contents  of  a  common  coal-scuttle, 
say  50  pounds  in  weight  of  carbon,  would  demand  fifty 
horse-power  for  five  hours  and  forty-two  minutes.  A 
prodigious  reservoir  of  energy  is  unloosed  trigger-fashion 


cS4      THE   HIGHER  TEACHINGS  OF   EIRE 

in  the  act  of  kindling  a  blaze,  in  the  trifling  labour  of  rub- 
bing two  sticks  together,  or  striking  a  flint  against  a  steel. 
A  prehistoric  smith  by  roundly  hammering  a  bit  of  cop- 
per, or  iron,  on  his  anvil  might  warm  it  until  it  burned  his 
fingers,  while  in  a  blaze  the  metal  would  not  grow  warm 
simply,  but  melt  away.  What  Cyclops  could  wield  a  ham- 
mer with  eflect  so  violent?  Plainly  enough  the  capture  of 
fire  meant  seizing  a  servant  vastly  more  powerful  than 
horse,  or  ox,  or  elephant,  one  that  could  be  chained  to 
tasks  defying  the  might  of  either  the  winds  or  streams  har- 
nessed to  the  clacking  mill-shafts  of  old-time  industry. 

And  this  servant,    heat,   is   as   fruitfully   studied   in   the 
molecule  as  in  the  mass.      One  of  the  most  pregnant  the- 
ories due  to  the  study  of  heat  offers  an 
The  Kinetic  Theory     explanation  of    the  pressure   of  gases  or 
of  Gases.  vapours   confined   in    closed  vessels.      A 

thin,  flat  box  containing  but  a  pound  oi 
air  can  sustain,  without  the  slightest  hurt,  a  superincum- 
bent atmospheric  pressure  of  many  tons.  How?  The 
molecules  of  the  air,  light  though  they  are,  bombard  the 
inner  sides  of  the  box  with  so  great  a  velocity  (about  1600 
feet  a  second)  that  the  pressure  from  within  exactly  balances 
that  from  without.  The  speed  of  a  projectile  counts  for  as 
much  as  its  density  in  creating  its  momentum — a  tallow 
candle  can  be  shot  from  a  gun  so  as  to  pierce  a  thick  oak 
plank.  If  we  wish  to  confirm  this  kinetic  theory  of  g 
we  are  bidden  to  observe  the  rate  at  which  common  air 
rushes  into  a  vacuum  —  we  shall  find  it  about  1600  feet  a 
second.  The  inference  is  that  the  pressure  of  a  gas,  or  a 
vapour,  is  at  any  instant  represented  by  its  actual  motion 
through  space.  When,  therefore,  either  steam  or  com- 
pressed air  pushes  a  piston,  there  is  nothing  else  done  than 
giving  up  to  the  moving  metal  part  of  the  projectile  force 
from  the  gas.  It  is  this  parting  with  some  of  the  motion 
in   which  heat  consists  that   causes  the  temperature  of   the 


PROPERTIES   DUE   TO   MOTION        85 

expanding  substance  to  fall.  We  here  observe  one  of  the 
most  important  feats  of  engineering  art — the  conversion  of 
heat  into  work. 

The  explanation  of  properties  as  due  to  actual   motion 
has  been   extended   far   and  wide   beyond   the   bounds   of 
thermal  phenomena;   it  has  become  one 
of  the  fundamental  conceptions  of  both      Properties  as  Due 
physics    and    chemistry  —  now    deemed  to  Motion, 

but  the  higher  branches  of  mechanics. 
It  is  thought,  for  example,  that  every  whit  of  the  stupen- 
dous energy  developed  by  fuels  as  they  combine  with  oxy- 
gen in  flame  actually  resides  as  motion  in  them  before  they 
unite.  This  chemic  motion  is  believed  to  be  distinct  from 
the  heat  motion  represented  by  temperature,  just  as  the 
movement  of  the  earth  round  its  axis  is  distinct  from  its 
circling  round  the  sun.  At  extremely  low  temperatures 
chemical  unions  refuse  to  take  place,  so  that  it  seems  to 
be  necessary  to  superadd  thermal  to  chemical  motion,  if 
chemical  affinity  is  to  have  free  play.  Let  us  observe  a 
lump  of  coal  as  it  lies  quiescent  in  the  mine  and  the 
atmospheric  oxygen  needed  for  its  combustion ;  their 
chemic  motion  before  their  burning  is  held  to  be  no  more 
and  no  less  than  the  visible  and  palpable  motion  which 
their  flame  would  generate  if  applied  without  waste  to 
doing  work. 

Sir  Isaac  Newton  was  so  profound  a  thinker  that  even 
his  guesses  pointed  to  truth.  As  he  observed  the  extraordi- 
nary refractive  power  of  the  diamond  he  conjectured  that  it 
was  highly  combustible.  In  due  time  the  diamond  was 
proved  to  be  carbon,  and  was  burned  in  one  laboratory 
after  another  as  thoroughly  as  if  it  had  been  so  much  char- 
coal. Newton's  guess  proceeded  from  his  noticing  that 
refractiveness,  as  a  rule,  characterised  combustible  bodies. 
It  may  be  that  this  property  is  the  betrayal  of  an  unusual 
quantity  of  contained  chemic  motion — which  impedes  and 


86      THE  HIGHER  TEACHINGS  OF  FIRE 

turns  aside  an  impinging  beam  of  light.  Enriched  as  the 
modern  notion  of  the  molecule  has  become,  little  marvel 
that  the  epithet  "brute  matter"  is  dropped  from  modern 
vocabularies. 

Investigators  have  not  remained  content  with  subtile  in- 
quiries regarding  molecules.  They  have  passed  from  the 
unit  to  the  all — from  studying  the  atom 
The  Probable  Death     to  considering  the  universe  and  its  pos- 

of  the  universe.  sible  fate.  In  our  survey  of  heat-engines 
we  found  that  none  of  them  converted 
heat  into  mechanical  motion  except  with  grievous  waste. 
In  truth  heat  is  the  form  of  energy  hardest  to  convert  into 
any  other  form  ;  while  electricity,  chemical  action,  and  me- 
chanical motion  easily  and  fully  resolve  themselves  into 
heat.  Heat  by  radiation,  by  convection,  and  by  conduction 
ever  tends  to  uniformity  of  temperature ;  but  it  is  only 
when  differences  of  temperature  exist  that  there  is  an  op- 
portunity for  the  conversion  of  heat  into  work;  just  as 
every  water-power  in  the  world  depends  upon  the  differ- 
ence of  level  between  one  part  of  a  stream  and  another. 

Suppose  that  in  the  morning  of  a  summer  day  the  ther- 
mometer stands  at  300  C,  and  that  we  have  at  hand  a 
pound  of  water  at  O0  C,  and  another  pound  of  water  at 
6o°  C.  We  can  get  work  out  of  both  :  the  hot  water  may  be 
used  to  expand  air  and  drive  a  piston  ;  the  cold  water  may 
be  employed  to  contract  air  and  so  move  a  piston  in  an 
opposite  direction.  But  if,  instead  of  doing  this,  we  simply 
let  the  hot  and  cold  water  mingle  together  we  shall  have 
in  a  few  seconds  two  pounds  of  water  at  300  C,  and 
no  work  whatever  will  have  been  performed,  because  the 
useful  difference  of  temperature  between  the  two  pounds 
ot  water  no  longer  exists.     The  ordinary  temperature  <>t  the 

earth's  surface  is  about    3OO0    C.    above  absolute   zero,  and 

\-<-t  the  vast  store  of  heat  thus  represented  is  worthless  as 
a  source  of  work,  foi   where  shall  an  engineer  find  .1  lower 


WILL   THE   UNIVERSE   DIE?  8 


temperature  gratis  with  which  he  may  chill  the  working 
substance  of  an  engine? 

With  these  plain  facts  before  him,  Professor  William 
Thomson  (now  Lord  Kelvin)  nearly  fifty  years  ago  launched 
a  speculation  of  the  boldest.  He  reasoned  that  as  the  res- 
ervoir of  unavailable  heat  in  the  universe  is  steadily  gaining 
in  quantity,  it  must  eventually  include  all  the  working 
energy  there  is,  and  as  matter  at  some  indefinite  future 
time  will  possess  no  other  motion  but  that  due  to  heat 
of  high  but  uniform  temperature,  all  further  change  will 
cease.  In  the  present  state  of  knowledge  no  flaw  appears 
in  the  premises  or  deductions  of  this  theory,  and  its  sentence 
of  death  can  be  suspended  only  by  the  disclosure  of  coun- 
tervailing processes  as  yet  undetected.  That  such  pro- 
cesses may  yet  be  discovered  is  suggested  by  the  question, 
If  the  theory  be  true,  why,  in  the  eternity  of  the  past,  did 
not  the  clock  of  the  universe  run  down  long  ago  ? 

That  the  "  dissipation  of  energy,"  if  real,  is  a  slow  pro- 
cess, is  obvious  from  the  marvellously  sustained  powers  of 
the  sun.  Speculations  as  daring  as  they  are  ingenious  have 
sought  to  account  for  the  prodigious  radiation  of  solar  heat 
and  light.  It  is  estimated  that  to  support  this  radiation 
from  a  single  square  foot  of  the  sun's  surface  for  one  hour 
would  demand  the  combustion  of  ten  cubic  feet  of  the 
densest  coal.  Upon  what  store  of  energy  can  drafts  so 
prodigal  be  honoured  year  after  year,  age  after  age?  The 
most  plausible  theory  is  that  due  to  Helmholtz  —  that  the 
sun's  temperature  is  maintained  chiefly  by  the  contraction 
of  his  mass.  It  is  a  remarkable  fact,  first  pointed  out  by  J. 
Homer  Lane  of  Washington,  in  1870,  that  a  gaseous  sphere, 
losing  heat  by  radiation  and  contracting  by  its  own  gravity, 
must  rise  in  temperature  and  grow  hotter  until  it  ceases  to 
be  a  "perfect"  gas,  either  by  beginning  to  liquefy,  or  by 
reaching  a  density  at  which  the  laws  of  "  perfect  "  gases  no 
longer  hold.      The  kinetic  energy  developed  by  the  shrink- 


88      THE  HIGHER   TEACHINGS  OF  FIRE 

age  of  a  gaseous  mass  is  more  than  enough  to  replace  the 
less  of  heat  which  caused  the  shrinkage.  In  the  case  of  a 
liquid  or  solid  mass  this  is  not  so.1 

Lord  Kelvin  asks  whether  the  universe  as  a  whole  may 

not  have  limits  in  future  time,  and  taste  of  death,  as  do  its 

component    moons,    planets,    and    stars. 

Are  there  Limits  to     Professor  Simon  New  comb,  the  eminent 

Occupied  Space  ?  1      .1  .1 

v        v  astronomer,   inquires    whether    the    cos- 

mos may  not  also  have  limits  in  the 
space  which  it  occupies.  He  estimates  that  the  number 
of  stars  revealed  in  the  camera  is  perhaps  100,000,000. 
He  asks:  "Are  all  these  stars  only  those  which  happen 
to  be  near  us  in  a  universe  extending  without  end,  or 
do  they  form  a  collection  of  stars  outside  of  which  is 
empty  infinite  space?  In  other  words,  has  the  universe 
a  boundary?"2  Let  some  yet  bolder  mathematician  com- 
pute, if  he  can,  the  temperature  which  would  result  from 
the  consolidation  of  all  the  matter  of  the  known  universe 
into  a  single  ball. 

In  this  realm  of  cosmical  theories  a  remarkable  contribu- 
tion appeared  from  Professor  F.  W.  Clarke,  in  the  Popu- 
lar Science  Monthly,  January,  1873.  lie  drew  attention 
to  the  fact  that  the  hottest  stars  have  the  fewest  elements 
in  their  spectra,  and  argued  that  as  stars  fall  in  temperature 
the  increase  in  the  number  of  their  elements  may  be  din-  to 
an  evolution  such  as  gives  us  chemical  compounds  on  earth. 
This  hypothesis  has  been  ably  maintained  and  developed 
by  Sir  Norman  Lockyer,  the  astronomer.  It  offers  an  in- 
telligible basis  for  one  of  the  most  significant  laws  known 
to  the  chemist.  I  lis  "elements"  have  thus  far  resisted  .ill 
available  means  of  decomposition,  but  that  they  are  really 
compounds    is    suspected    from    their    falling    into    family 

1  c.    A.    Young,    General  Astronomy,  $356,  357.      Dr.    I.  J.  J.  Set-,  in  t lie 
Atlantit  Monthly,  April,  [899,  generalises  the  law  oi  Lane. 
-  .)/,  <  'lure'i  Maga  ine,  July,   1 : 


FIRE-WORSHIP  89 

groups  each  characterised  by  kindred  properties.1  The 
stars  glow  at  temperatures  far  exceeding  those  possible  in 
the  laboratory,  so  that  in  the  stellar  spheres  a  resolution  of 
"  elements "  may  take  place  such  as  the  chemist  cannot 
hope  to  repeat  with  any  heat  it  is  in  his  power  to  produce. 

While    fire  bears   the  richest   suggestion  to   the  philoso- 
pher of  to-day,  it   meant   much,  also,  to   his  ancestor,  the 
priest.      He  saw  that   that  great    flame, 
the  sun,  was  not  only  the  quickener  and       Fire  and  Religion, 
sustainer  of  life,  but  its   destroyer,  too. 
At  his  altar  there  was  propitiation  as  well  as  homage.     Fire 
as   a  symbol   in   this   august  worship   has   glowed  in  lands 
widely  remote  from  each   other.      The  solar  cult  has  had 
its  temples  in  Egypt  and  Chaldea,  in  Greece  and  Mexico. 
Nor  are  fire-worshippers  extinct.     They  notably  survive  in- 
India,  at  Bombay.      Of   kin  to  them  is  the  Japanese,  who 
solemnly  brings  into  his  house  at  the  new  year  fire  which 
has   been   lighted  by  rubbing  wood   on  an  appointed  day. 
The  Russian,  in  the  district  of  TambofT,  carries  all  the  ashes 
he   can   and  some   stones   from  his   old  hearth   into  a  new 
house,  to  bring  luck — a  survival  of  the  transference  of  the 
fire  itself. 

Dr.  D.  G.  Brinton  says  that  all  the  American  races,  with 
the  exception  of  the  Eskimos,  the  North  Athabascans,  and 
a  few  others,  have  been  sun-worshippers.  The  Comanches 
and  Utes,  for  example,  use  the  term  "  Father  Sun,"  and 
perform  dances  and  other  rites  in  his  honour.  The  Choc- 
taws,  who  were  devoted  sun- worshippers,  maintained  perpet- 
ual fire,  as  did  the  Creeks.     The   Moquis  of  northeastern 

1  The  oxygen  group,  with  the  atomic  weights  of  its  elements,  are :  oxygen, 
16;  sulphur,  32;  chromium,  52;  selenium,  jq ;  molybdenum,  96;  tellurium, 
125;  tungsten,  183.6;  uranium,  240.  It  will  be  noted  that  the  figures  which 
follow  16,  the  atomic  weight  of  oxygen,  are  exactly  or  nearly  multiples  of  16. 
As  an  inference  from  the  "  periodic  law,"  or,  as  one  of  its  discoverers,  New- 
lands,  called  it,  the  "  law  of  octaves,"  the  physical  and  chemical  properties  of 
an  element  are  assumed  to  turn  upon  its  atomic  weight. 


9o      THE  HIGHER  TEACHINGS  OF  FIRE 

na   continue   their  worship  of   the   sun   to   this  day. 
The  dates  for  the  ceremonies  ir  calendar  are  deter- 

mined by  the  position  of  the  sun  on  the  horizon.1  In 
\  rth  America  the  tribal  tires  were  political  as  well  as  re- 
ligious:  they  shone  not  only  upon  priest  and  devotee,  but 
upon  chief  and  councillor.  Here  an  order  oi  precedence  as 
strict  as  that  of  modern  courts  was  observed  ;  as  foray  and 
defence  were  planned,  the  seniors  sat  next  the  blaze,  with  the 
people  around  them,  the  juniors  farthest  from  the  hearth. 

The  founders  oi  the  cult  of  fire,  Zoroaster  and  the  rest, 
builded  better  than  they  knew.  Every  advance  in  science 
brings  fresh  perception  that  every  throb  of  life  around  us 
has  its  mainspring'  in  the  sun.  In  entrapping  a  sunbeam, 
and  releasing  it  ages  afterward  at  a  higher  temperature,  as 
rays  from  coal,  the  leaves  oi  plants  display  a  power  to  i 
the  intensity  of  energy  which  is  as  mysterious  to  the  phi- 
her  as  to  the  child.  It  is  this  postponed  solar  toil  that 
we  have  been  chiefly  considering — a  toil  that  has  become  of 
surpassing  importance  as  the  intelligence  of  man  has  grown 
from  much  to  more.  The  savage  may  thrive  with  only  the 
sun  to  work  for  him,  but  as  he  rises  to  barbarism  he  learns 
to  kindle  fire;  while  the  empires  of  civilisation  depend 
upon  nothing  more  indispensably  than  their  coal-mines, 
their  naval  coaling-stations  dotting  every  sea.  Was  it  a 
fort-feeling  of  all  this  that  bade  the  pagan  recall  in  fire  the 
infinite  might  of  the  solar  blaze  —  that  led  him  to  discard 
for  the  pure  and  compelling  rlame  the  idols  built  from 
rock  and  tree? 

1  Christianity,  with  its  roots  deep  in  the  religions  which  went  before  it, 
.  clear  impress  of  the  s<dar  cult.       Christmas  tails  immediately  after  the 
winter  solstice,  when  the  clay  beginning  to  gain  upon  night  may  symbolise  the 
vtt.      It  is  curious  to  note  that  the  chief  religious  cere- 
mony  of  the    Moqois  -   at   the  winter   solstice.      The  si 

■  reminds  us  that  the  moon  once  shared  veneration 
with  the  sun.  The  Feast  of  the  Resurrection  take-  place  on  the  first  Sunday 
after  the  first  full  moon  on  i  March  21,  the  vernal  equinox. 


MYTHS    PROPHETIC  91 

In  boyhood  as  one  reads  the  myths  of  old  they  seem 
empty  enough  in  meaning;  not  so  when  one  takes  them  up 
in  middle  life.  Were  Briareus,  with  his 
hundred  hands,  and  Argus,  with  his  hun-  Myth  Prefigures  Fact, 
dred  eyes,  anything  but  what  the  myth- 
maker  himself  desired  to  be?  As  he  was  opposed  by 
mountains  he  wished  to  rend  for  his  pathways,  or  by  gulfs 
he  would  fain  have  bridged,  he  sighed  at  the  feebleness  of 
his  bodily  powers.  Little  wonder  that  he  took  comfort  in 
imagining  gods  and  heroes  armed  for  tasks  he  so  earnestly 
longed  to  perform,  but  which  found  him  too  puny  for  any- 
thing more  than  wishing.  As  man  has  come  to  more  and 
more  knowledge  of  nature,  has  grasped  her  forces  with  in- 
sight ever  keener,  the  ancient  dreams  have  come  true,  have 
been  exceeded  far.  In  days  of  old,  when  a  ship  moved 
through  the  sea  against  the  wind,  the  sailor  had  to  labour 
at  an  oar.  To-day  his  hand  is  upon  the  rudder,  not  the  oar; 
he  has  passed,  like  many  a  craftsman,  from  the  lowly  plane 
of  immediate  muscular  exertion  to  the  guiding  of  forces 
titanic  in  comparison  with  those  of  his  own  feeble  frame. 

Fire,  in  these  modern  times,  has  wrought  blessings  such 
as  the  ancients  never  dared  to  pray  for.  It  has  abolished 
much  of  the  most  exhausting  drudgery  known  among  men, 
as  in  building  and  mining.  Upon  people  who  count  them- 
selves poor  it  bestows  an  array  of  comforts  in  shelter,  cloth- 
ing, and  food,  in  travel  cheap  and  safe,  which  in  the  past 
fifty  years  have  not  only  lengthened  life,  but  made  life  bet- 
ter worth  having  while  it  lasts.  Let  us  change  a  word  in 
Shakespeare  so  as  to  have  him  say  :  "  How  oft  the  sight  of 
means  to  do  good  deeds  makes  good  deeds  done!  "  If  cruelty 
is  disappearing  from  among  civilised  men,  if  Mercy  widens 
her  field  with  every  passing  year,  if  Hope  sees  new  and 
assured  ground  for  further  betterment  as  one  generation 
succeeds  another,  much  must  be  credited  to  man's  new 
ability  to  enjoy  wholesome  pleasures,  to  avoid  pain  and  evil 


92       THE   HIGHER    TEACHINGS   OF    FIRE 

which  were  believed,  until  <>ur  day,  to  be  as  inevitable  as 
doom.  And  in  that  new  ability'  a  Leading  place  must  be 
accorded  the  supersession  of  the  hand  and  arm  by  flame, 
the  application  of  fire  to  tasks  impossible,  and  even  un- 
imagined,  when  the  hand  and  arm  were  unseconded  and 
alone  in  the  field  of  toil. 

It  is  a  common  remark  that  there  is  wealth  enough  in 
the  world,  were  it  only  fairly  apportioned.  But  let  us  re- 
member that  were  the  total  yearly  income  of  the  American 
people,  one  of  the  richest  on  earth,  allotted  equally  among 
its  teeming  millions,  each  share  would  be  about  two  hun- 
dred dollars.  Could  this  be  called  wealth?  In  truth,  the 
world  is  poor,  and  while  equity  in  distribution  is  desirable, 
not  less  desirable  is  it  to  increase  the  sum  of  divisible  things 
bv  the  untiring  furtherance  of  knowledge  at  work. 

Man  owes  to  fire  a  yet  weightier  debt  than  either  its  in- 
dustrial harvests  or  the  physical  theories  which  it  has 
prompted.  While  as  a  thinker  he  has 
a  Scientific  Philosophy,  passed  from  fact  to  law,  from  detail  to 
generalisation,  his  study  of  fire,  of  all 
that  fire  has  brought  in  its  train,  has  given  breadth  and 
depth  to  his  philosophy.  The  more  it  has  taught  him  of 
truth,  the  wider  has  it  plumed  the  wings  of  his  imagination 
for  a  secure  flight  into  realms  beyond  the  range  of  the  rye. 
The  savage,  as  he  sought  to  explain  what  he  saw  around 
him,  indulged  in  many  a  wild  and  baseless  notion  as  to 
what  lay  beneath  appearances.  His  fancies  to-day  arc  held 
but  as  the  games  and  stories  of  childhood;  the  established 
theory  of  evolution  peoples  all  space  and  all  time  with  a 
procession  of  life,  an  involution  of  drama,  that  dwarfs  and 
shrivels  all  purely  invented  story,  all  phantasms  unrooted 
in  fact.  Tile  ccsmogories  of  the  cave  and  the  wigwam  have 
now  little  other  interest  than  as  chapters  in  the  natural  his- 
tory of  error,  the  first  stumblings  of  the  human  mind  in 
the  long  road  which  at  last  approaches  truth.      To-day  the 


FIRE   A    FORERUNNER  93 

student  of  the  universe  looks  within  it,  not  without  it,  for 
the  forces  to  explain  its  history.  As  his  studies  proceed 
he  becomes  more  and  more  firmly  convinced  that  nature 
is  intelligible  to  her  very  core,  that  she  has  no  laws  which 
it  is  not  his  privilege  and  duty  to  know.  In  that  order  a 
tremendous  part  is  played  by  the  antithetical  forces  of  Heat 
and  Gravitation — Heat  that  sunders,  and  Gravitation  that 
consolidates  and  unites. 

Rich  through  all  the  ages  of  man's  history  as  Fire  was  in 
itself,  however  lavish  its  gifts  in  woodland  and  mine,  work- 
shop and  home,  battle-field  and  temple,  it  was  all  the  while 
a  means  no  less  than  an  end  :  it  was  preparing  man  to  yoke 
to  his  chariot  another  servant  as  mighty — Electricity.  Skill 
of  hand  with  stick  and  stone  entered  a  new  kingdom  when 
a  spark  of  fire  was  created,  preserved,  and  set  to  work ;  in 
its  turn,  fire  made  ready  the  way  for  conquests  impossible 
to  itself,  as  it  brought  man  to  the  pitch  of  knowledge  and 
skill  needed  for  his  new  role  as  electrician. 


CHAPTER   VIII 

THE    PRODUCTION    OF    ELECTRICITY 

THROUGH  the  course   of  all  the  ages  since  the  first 
kindling  of   fire,  almost  down  to  our  own  day,  flame 
had    beside   her   a   twin    force    all    unrecognised.      Now  it 

glinted  as  lightning,  anon  as  the  aurora 
Unsuspected  Kinship,    it  streamed    fitfully   across   the   sky.      It 

clothed  itself  in  the  amber  of  the  sea- 
beach  that,  under  gentle  friction,  drew  to  itself  fragments 
of  fallen  leaves,  of  withered  grass,  or,  in  the  hands  of  a 
comber,  obliged  tow  and  flax  to  fly  apart  as  if  in  a  lively 
breeze.  Arrayed  in  iron  it  took  on  an  iron  constancy, 
unsupported  masses  defying  the  pull  of  gravitation  for 
years  together,  and,  as  the  legend  tells  us,  sorely  puzzling  a 
shepherd  by  holding  his  crook  fast  to  the  ceiling  of  a  cave 
roofed,  as  we  would  say  now,  with  magnetic  ore.  Afloat 
in  a  bowl  of  water,  the  earliest  recorded  use  of  the  lode- 
stone  is  to  point  Chinese  diviners  to  lucky  sites  tor  projected 
buildings;  it  was  not  until  a  much  later  time  that  the  coin- 
pass  began  to  aid  the  mariner  when  sun  and  star  were 
hidden.  Little  marvel  that  so  various  a  masquerade  was 
long  impenetrable,  that  it  should  be  only  five  generations 
ago  that  Franklin  was  able  to  identify  the  spark  from  the 
storm-cloud   with  the  spark  from  his  Leyden  jar. 

Between  the  first  observations  of  flame  and  of  electricity 
there  is  only  contrast;  flame,  even  while  passively  received, 

94 


FORERUNNERS   OF   FRANKLIN         95 

before  the  skill  to  kindle  it  had  appeared,  was  recognised 
as  useful.  Electricity,  on  the  other  hand,  was  so  fitful  in 
its  play,  so  slight  in  quantity,  that  no  serious  attention  was 
ever  paid  to  its  phenomena  until  comparatively  recent 
times.  Not  until  the  eighteenth  century  was  it  suspected 
that  the  tiny  sparks  due  to  common  friction  were  of  iden- 
tical character  with  the  dreaded  lightning  of  the  sky.  The 
conductor  devised  by  Franklin  for  the  protection  of  build- 
ings is  first  in  the  order  of  time  among  useful  electrical  in- 
ventions, just  as  the  compass  is  first  among  magnetic 
contrivances. 

The  experiments  of  Franklin  were  possible  in  that  he 
was  rich  by  inheritance  from  an  illustrious  line  of  investi- 
gators, of  whom  four  stand  out  so   pre- 
eminently as  tO  divide  honours  with  their      Four  Great  Pioneers. 

great  successor.  These  four  are  William 
Gilbert,  Otto  von  Guericke,  Stephen  Gray,  and  Dean 
von  Kleist.  Their  labours  did  much  toward  opening 
the  path  which  should  end  at  last  in  creating  a  force  by 
turns  an  ally  or  a  rival  to  fire  itself;  they  showed  (1)  how 
electricity  could  be  produced  in  quantities  comparatively 
large,  and  with  new  facility ;  (2)  how  a  charge  could  be 
insulated  and  so  preserved  from  dissipation ;  (3)  that 
such  a  charge  was  transmissible  for  long  distances  with 
but  little  loss,  and  with  seeming  instantaneity ;  (4)  that 
electricity  could  be  excited  in  an  uncharged  body  as  it 
approached  a  charged  body,  by  just  the  same  induction 
that  excites  magnetism  in  common  iron  as  it  comes  near  a 
compass. 

Gilbert,  who  was  court  physician  to  Queen  Elizabeth, 
began  his  studies  of  electricity  by  an  elaborate  investiga- 
tion of  the  properties  of  the  magnet.  Poising  a  light, 
metallic  needle  compass-fashion,  he  was  able  to  measure 
the  attractive  force  in  the  various  substances  which  he  ex- 
cited electrically  and  brought  near  this  first  of  all  electrical 


96     THE  PRODUCTION  OF  ELECTRICITY 

instruments  (Fig.  22).  He  discovered  that  there  are  many 
substances,  like  amber  and  jet,  which,  when  electrified  by- 
friction,  exert  attraction  ;   of  these  substances  he  drew  up  a 

useful  list.      He  ascertained,  also, 
V    that  the  substances  which  refuse 
to  be  electrified  by  friction  are  not 

few,    but    many.     This    class    he 
Fig.  22.  ,  ,  .      , 

named     non-electrics,     including 
Gilbert's  electroscope. 

among  them  the  lodestone,  sil- 
ver, gold,  copper,  and  common  iron;  all  these  were  to  be 
grouped  at  a  later  day  as  conductors,  to  be  distinguished 
from  the  non-conductors  which  Gilbert  called  electrics. 
His  means  of  examination  were  inadequate  to  the  proof 
that  conduction  is  a  universal  property  of  matter,  and 
that  all  the  difference  between  copper  and  glass  in  this 
respect  is  that  they  occupy  the  two  extremes  of  a  single 
scale.  In  the  vast  difference  between  the  conductivity 
of  copper  and  of  glass  lay  the  possibility,  soon  to  be 
realised,  of  sending  electricity  afar  by  giving  it  an  easy 
path  of  travel,  a  path  hedged  in  by  a  covering  through 
which  the  charge  could  not  escape.  Gilbert  discovered 
that  a  piece  of  silk  laid  upon  an  electric  directly  after 
friction  preserved  a  charge  of  electricity.  This  was  of 
cardinal  importance,  for  now  such  a  charge  could  be 
preserved  as  had  never  before  been  possible.  He  noted, 
too,  that  tin:  transmission  of  electricity  seemed  to  be  in- 
stantaneous.1 

Otto  von  Guericke,  the  famous  burgomaster  of  Magde- 
burg, who  flourished  about  the  middle  of  the  seventeenth 
century,  devised  the  first  machine  for  the  production  of 
electricity.  This  was  simply  a  ball  of  brimstone  turned 
on  an  axle,  against  which  silk   and   cloth   were  (irmly   held 

1  \n  account  "f  < '. il I x-rt '--  achievements,  which  included  much  else  of  mo- 
ment, is  given  in  Tin-  Intellectual  Rue  in  Electricity,  by  Park  Benjamin. 
New  Yoik,  Appleton,  1895. 


FIRST    ELECTRICAL   MACHINE 


97 


(Fig.  23).  The  device  marks  the  entrance  of  electricity  as 
a  creation  of  mechanical  power  on  a  scale  impossible  to  the 
friction  of  handkerchiefs  on  glass.  It  brought  out  the  fact, 
too,  for  those  who  cared  to  think  about  it  as  they  turned 
the  handle  of  the  apparatus,  that  the  generation  of  electri- 
city meant  hard  work,  and  that  the  attractions  or  repulsions 


Fig.  23. 
Von  Guericke's  first  electrical  machine. 


which  resulted  from  the  machine's  operation  were  no  other 
than  the  reappearance  of  this  work.  Von  Guericke's 
crude  device  was  succeeded  by  a  bottle-shaped  cylinder  of 
glass ;  next  came  the  circular  glass  plate  whose  sparks  were 
caught  on  metallic  teeth  and  borne  away  to  work  their 
wonders.  Von  Guericke,  by  varying  the  form  of  a  con- 
ductor, came  upon  a  discovery  of  prime  importance.  In- 
stead of  using  a  mass  of  metal  of  the  usual  compact  form, 
he  employed  a  linen  thread,  an  ell  or  more  in  length;  he 
found  that  the  electric  charge  traversed  it  in  a  twinkling. 
He  thus  extended  and  confirmed  the  observation  of  Gil- 
bert as  to  the  speed  of  electricity. 


98     THE  PRODUCTION  OF  ELECTRICITY 

Stephen  Gray,  a  pensioner  in  the  Charterhouse  of  Lon- 
don, in  1728  and  thereabout  carried  forward  the  work  of 
Von  Guericke  in  a  masterly  way.  He  observed  that  even 
very  short  pieces  of  silk  were  impervious  to  electricity,  so 
that  with  silk  as  his  insulator  he  succeeded  in  conveying  an 
electric  charge  through  a  metallic  wire  for  a  distance  of 
more  than  three  hundred  feet.  Here  was  the  first  practical 
use  of  an  insulator  as  a  means  of  promoting  the  transmis- 
sion of  a  charge  to  a  long  distance.  Gray  discovered, 
furthermore,  that  his  electrified  glass  tube  affected  his  line 
without  contact — by  induction,  as  in  the  case  of  bits  of  foil 
observed  long  before  by  himself  and  his  predecessors.  Next 
to  Gray  in  this  early  roll  of  honour  stands  Dean  von  Kleist, 
of  the  Cathedral  of  Camin  in  Pomerania,  who,  in  1745,  in- 
vented the  original  form  of  Leyden  jar.  This  was  simply 
a  vial  in  which  a  nail,  or  bunch  of  wire,  was  charged  with 
electricity;  protected  by  the  non-conducting  glass,  the 
inclosed  metal  maintained  its  charge  for  a  comparatively 
long  period. 

It  was  by  such  steps  as  these,  humble  and  tardy  as  they 
were,  that  electricity  began  to  take  its  place  beside  fire  as 
one  of  the  supreme  resources  of  man.  He  had  now  dis- 
covered how  he  could  best  generate  it  by  a  wise  choice  of 
substances  to  be  rubbed  together;  he  had  learned  to  dis- 
criminate between  things  which  convey  electricity  very  well 
and  very  badly;  he  came  to  know  how,  by  the  use  of  had 
conductors  or  non-condu<  tors,  a  charge  might  he  preserved 
from  the  almost  immediate  dissipation  that  followed  every 
old-time  experiment  ;  and,  above  all  else,  he  had  found  that 
electricity  has  a  pace  so  rapid  that  it  seemed  instantaneous. 

The  electricity  of  the  frictional  machine  was  now  easily 
Stored  for  as  ninth  as  an  hour  at  a  time,  and  the  range  of 
electrical  experiment  passe,!  from  the  laboratory  of  the 
student  to  the  drawing-room  of  fashion.  Experiments 
familiar  to  us  all  from  childhood  excited  interest  through- 


CHEMISTS    TAKE   THE   STAGE 


99 


out  wide  circles  of  the  learned  and  the  uninformed.  Pith- 
balls  charged  with  positive  or  negative  electricity  were 
suspended  to  repel  each  other  just  as  the  north  or  the  south 
poles  of  two  magnets  drove  each  other  away.  Then,  to 
balance  marvel  with  marvel,  two  strips  of  gold-leaf,  when 
oppositely  electrified,  sprang  together  as  eagerly  as  the 
north  pole  of  one  magnet  seeks  the  south 
pole  of  another  (Fig.  24).  Here  was  a  clear 
intimation  as  to  the  identity  of  electricity 
and  magnetism  which  led  in  due  season  to  the 
best  modern  means  of  producing  them  both. 

Thus  far  the  generation  of  electricity  had 
no   practical   worth.      Its   attraction   and    its 
sparks  were  too  feeble  to  be  more  than  curi- 
ous,   for   the    moment    the    operator's    hand 
ceased  to  turn  the  axle  of  a  machine  all  elec- 
trical  phenomena    vanished.      As   compared 
with  the  first  fire-making  this  early  produc- 
tion of  electricity  was  much  more  artificial, 
but  it  was  not  artificial   enough.    To   rub  a         FlG 
globe  or  disc  of  glass  with  a  silk  handkerchief  Electrical  repul- 
is  certainly  a  farther  reach  of  artifice  than  to      sion  and  at- 
abrade  one  stick  against  another,  or  to  strike 
together  two  pieces  of  iron  pyrites.      Yet,  when  the  fire- 
maker  brought  his  spark   or  smouldering  dust  to   fuel,  his 
labour  was   not   only  immensely  heightened   in   effect,  but 
carried  on  indefinitely,  and   this  without   another  blow  or 
thrust  from  his  arm.      There  was  wanting  a  similar  step  in 
electric  art :    it  was  necessary  that  for  a  time  the  chemists 
should  bow  the  mechanics  off  the  stage. 

As  early  as  the  fifth  century  it  was  recorded  by  the 
Greek  historian,  Zosimus,  that  iron  swords  plunged  into 
copper  solutions  came  out  coated  with  a  film  of  copper. 
This  observation,  like  that  of  the  first  lodestone,  came  too 
soon  to  bear  fruit  at  once.      It  was  not   until    1759   that 


ioo     THE  PRODUCTION  OF  ELECTRICITY 


Fig.  25. 
Galvani's  experiment 


Galvani   noticed   that   a   metal   wire   touching  at   one   end 

the  nerves   of  a  frog,  and  at   the   other  end   the   muscles 

of  its  leg,  caused  a  momentary   twitch- 

voita  invents  the  Pile  ing.      When  he  used  two  wires  of  differ- 

and  the  Crown  of  Cups.   ent    metajs    the    contractions    were    much 

more  vigorous  (Fig.   25).      As  he  found 

the  same  convulsive  movement  followed  from  the  spark  of 

a  frictional  machine,  he  concluded 

that  the  phenomena  had  a  common 

origin  in  the  animal  itself.      Volta 

took  the  next  step ;    he  reasoned 

that  the  electrical  energy  was  due 

rather  to  the  action  of  the   wires 

than  to  any  property  of  the  frog's 

flesh.        Following    this    train    of 

thought,   he   built    up   a  series  of 
zinc     and     silver 

discs,  separating  each  disc  by  cloth  mois- 
tened in  acidulated  water ;  from  this  "  pile  " 
he  obtained  electricity  in  the  form  of  a 
flow,  much  more  satisfactory  than  had  ever 
been  evolved  from  a  frictional  apparatus 
(Fig.  26). 

For  the  first  time  in  human  art  electrici- 
ty now  poured  forth  in  the  absence  of  toil; 
here  was  just  such  an  advance  as  that  of 
obtaining  heat  from  fuel  instead  of  from 
muscular  exertion  :  the  feat  of  starting  a 
blaze  which  continues  itself  and  leaves  its 
kindler  free  had  found  its  parallel.  Before 
Volta  a  charge  of  electricity  was  no  more 
than  could  be  excited  by  rubbing  one  sur- 
face on  another;  he  invoked  the  might  of 

chemical    forces   which   involve   masses   instead.      As  each 

disc   of    zinc    dissolved   in    His    pile    it    presented   a   rapid 


Fig  26 
Volte's  pile. 


Plate  II. 


ALESSANDRO    VOLTA. 


A   CURRENT  AT   LAST  101 

succession  of  new  surfaces  to  the  intense  affinity  of  the 
corroding  liquid.  Before  the  time  of  the  great  Italian's 
device,  electricity  was  little  more  than  a  curiosity,  an  actu- 
ator of  toys,  instructive  if  you  will,  but  toys  nevertheless. 
As  soon  as  the  voltaic  pile  was  constructed  electricity  was 
no  longer  something  to  stare  at,  but  a  force  to  work  with 
— a  servant  to  take  orders  of  the  most  exacting  kind  and 
execute  them  with  fidelity. 

As  Volta  built  his  experimental  pile  higher  and  higher,  he 
found  it  more  and  more  faulty,  for  the  moisture  was  harm- 
fully squeezed  from  the  lower  pieces  of  the  acid-holding 
cloth.  In  1800  he  abandoned  it  and  devised  the  "  crown  of 
cups,"  a  battery  of  the  simplest  type  and  the  parent  of  every 
battery  since  fabricated ;  each  cell  contained  a  plate  of  zinc 
and  a  plate  of  silver  immersed  in  an  acid  solution.  The 
current  now  obtained,  though  uneven,  had  the  character  of 
a  flow  from  a  reservoir,  at  low  pressures  to  be  sure,  but  in 
quantity  vastly  greater  than  the  discharge  from  a  frictional 
machine,  and  without  the  bolt-like  and  unbiddable  quality 
of  the  machine  spark.  When  voltaic  cells  as  a  series  were 
joined  as  the  links  of  a  chain,  the  zinc  plate  of  one  cup  at- 
tached by  a  wire  to  the  silver  plate  of  the  adjoining  cup, 
each  exalted  the  intensity  of  the  next,  and  there  was  a 
distinct  approach  to  the  lightning  tension  of  the  original 
apparatus  built  of  glass  (Fig.  27).  For  generations  the  sole 
incentive  to  electrical  inquiry  had  been  philosophic  curios- 
ity— the  desire  to  know,  not  the  desire  to  profit.  The 
moment  that  Volta  disposed  his  crown  of  cups  this  dis- 
interested quest  came  to  a  great  reward :  a  new  agent  was 
brought  under  easy  control — an  agent  of  powers  known  to 
be  remarkable,  of  qualities  surmised  to  be  transcendent. 

A  link  between  the  old  servant,  heat,  and  the  new  candi- 
date for  employment,  electricity,  was  soon  discerned.  It 
had  long  been  observed  that  a  metal  as  it  dissolved  in  an 
acid  solution  underwent  a  rusting  process  accompanied  by 


io2     THE  PRODUCTION  OF  ELECTRICITY 

a  rise  of  temperature.  Fabrioni  in  Italy,  and  Wollaston 
and  Davy  in  England,  now  pointed  out  that  the  zinc  in  a 
battery  rusted  away  without  any  evolution  of  heat  what- 
ever. It  remained  for  Faraday  some  years  afterward  to 
identify  the  heat  which  zinc  may  yield,  as  it  corrodes  by 
itself  in  an  acid  bath,  with  the  electricity  it  may  evolve  in 
a  voltaic  cell,  and  to  prove  that  in  terms  of  energy  the  two 
are  the  same.  The  failure  of  the  voltaic  battery  to  pro- 
duce electricity  at  a  low  price  turns  upon  the  fact  that  even 
if  the  zinc  cost  no  more  per  ton  than  coal,  it  has  but  one- 
seventh  the  fuel  or  energy  value  ;  furthermore,  coal  employs 
air  without  cost  to  form  its  compounds,  while  zinc  demands 
expensive  acids.  We  shall  presently  see  how  coal  is  indi- 
rectly employed,  through  the  steam-engine,  to  produce 
electricity,  and  with  an  economy  which  restricts  the  voltaic 
battery  to  a  minor  range  of  utilities. 

There  is  an  alliance  of  heat  with  electricity  which  is  im- 
mediate, and   dispenses  with   the   roundabout  processes  of 

the  steam-engineer.      Heat  from  coal  and 
The  Thermo-battery,    other  f  uels   may  be   directly   applied   to 

generate  a  current,  although  with  a 
waste  so  enormous  as  to  be  prohibitory.  The  pioneer  in 
this  field  was  Seebeck,  who  in  1822  showed  that  when 
heat  is  applied  at  the  junction  of  two  different  metals  an 
electric  current  is  created.  Subsequent  trials  on  a  compre- 
hensive scale  proved  that  antimony  and  bismuth  form  the 
best  pair  for  this  effect.  Notwithstanding  many  attempts 
at  its  improvement,  the  thermo-electric  battery  remains  un- 
satisfactory. Its  pairs  are  apt  to  break  apart  by  inequal- 
ities of  expansion  and  contraction,  and  the  metals  employed 
lose  efficiency  from  causes  referable  to  molecular  change. 

A  thermo-battery  that  would  be  simple,  compact,  not 
liable  to  get  out  of  order,  and  of  moderate  cost,  would 
have  wide  acceptance;  for  although  but  an  extremely  small 
part  of   the  heat  sent    through  it  might  be   converted  into 


UNITY  DETECTED 


103 


electricity,  that  fraction  would  be  clear  gain  in  many  cases. 
Very  often  heat  is  required  only  for  warming,  and  air  or 
water  after  it  had  passed  through  a  thermo-battery  would 
be  at  a  temperature  quite  high  enough  for  this  purpose. 
While  the  thermo-battery  has  developed  no  industrial  value 
as  a  source  of  current,  it  has  become  in  the  laboratory  an 
exquisitely  delicate  means  of  detecting  minute  quantities 
of  heat.  An  electrical  thermometer  invented  by  Professor 
Callender  is  accurate  to  yooiyu  of  i°  C.  The  means  of 
this  detection  depend  upon  the  discovery  of  the  kinship  of 
magnetism  and  electricity,  and  this  brings  us  to  the  phase 
of  electrical  art  which  has  the  highest  practical  importance. 
When  early  investigators  saw  electrified  bits  of  foil  at- 
tract and  repel  each  other  as  if  they  were  magnets,  they 
began  to  ask,  Is  there  anything  in  com- 
mon  between    the    smiting    together   of     The  Unity  of  Eiec- 

.  ..  ijir  -^i  i.l-      tricity  and    Magnetism 

morsels   of   gold-leaf    oppositely   electri-  Detected, 

fled,  and  the  clashing  of  steel  oppositely 
magnetised?  Orsted  answered  this  question  in  1820,  as 
he  deflected  a  compass-needle,  ab,  by  a  wire,  NS,  convey- 
ing a  current  (Fig.  28). 
Ampere,  in  a  series  of 
conclusive  experiments, 
further  explored  the  re- 
lations between  magnet- 
ism and  electricity.  He 
showed  that  wires  bear- 
ing currents  attract  or 
repel  each  other  just  as 
magnets  do.  His  most 
telling  demonstration  was 
the  poising  of  a  coil  of  wire,  compass-fashion,  so  as  to 
permit  the  utmost  freedom  of  movement;  when  a  current 
was  sent  through  this  coil  it  took  up  a  north-and-south 
position,  attracted  iron  tacks  and   filings,  and  attracted  or 


Fig.  28. 
Orsted's  experiment. 


io4     THE  PRODUCTION  OF  ELECTRICITY 


repelled  a  steel  magnet  precisely  as  if  it  were  a  magnet 
itself  (Fig-  29).      The  inference  was  clear — a  steel  magnet 

may  be  considered  as  a  coil, 
or  spiral,  affected  by  elec- 
tricity in  rotation. 

One  contrast,  however, 
was  evident  from  the  first 
—  the  moment  that  a  cur- 
rent through  a  coil  ceases, 
its  magnetism  vanishes, 
while  the  attractive  power 
of  a  steel  magnet  may 
be  maintained  for  years. 
Around  every  magnet  is  a 
space,  or  "  field,"  through 
which  it  exerts  influence  in 
a  manner  easily  brought  to 
view.  We  have  only  to 
strew  iron  filings  on  a  sheet 
of  paper  close  to  the  pole  of 
a  magnet,  and  a  few  gentle 
taps  will  cause  the  filings  to 
stand  out  in  radial  lines  (Fig.  30).  If  we  take  the  same 
paper,  and,  removing  the  magnet,  pierce  the  sheet  with  a 
fine  wire  conveying  an  electric  current,  the  filings  will  now 
dispose  themselves  in  concentric  curves  instead  of  in  radial 
lines  (Fig.  3  1 ). 

Sturgeon,  in  1824,  advanced  matters  by  an  important 
step  as  he  discriminated  between  the  magnetism  of  steel 
and  that  of  soft  iron.  He  noticed  that  soft  iron  was  mag- 
netic only  while  in  contact  with  a  steel  magnet;  when 
he  severed  them  the  soft  iron  at  once  lost  its  attractive 
power.  He  found  also  that  if  a  core  of  soft  iron  was 
placed  within  an  electrical  coil,  the  iron  instantly  became 
a   magnet  of  uncommon   strength;    ami    that    the    moment 


Fig.  29. 

Electric  solenoid  pole  {A)  attracted  by 
dissimilar  pole  (B)  of  bar  magnet. 


Plate  III. 


From  a  photograph  by  .Maul  &"  Fox,  London. 


MICHAEL    FARADAY. 
(Holding  a  bar  of  heavy  glass.) 


ELECTROMAGNET    IMPROVED 


105 


Fig.  30.  Fig.  31. 

Magnetic  lines  of  force.  Electric  lines  of  force. 

the  current  was  br.oken  the  magnetism  of  the  iron  disap- 
peared (Fig.  32). 

Professor  Joseph  Henry,  in  researches  conducted  from 
1828  to  1830,  much  improved  Sturgeon's  device.  That 
inventor  had  wound  but  one  coil 
of  copper  wire  around  his  magnet, 
using  varnish  on  the  iron  as  a  means 
of  insulation.  Henry  insulated  a 
long  wire  with  silk  thread,  and 
wound  this  around  the  iron  in  sev- 
eral close  coils, 
obtaining  a  much 
more  powerful 
effect  than  Sturgeon's  (Fig.  33).  In  this 
temporary  magnet,  or  electromagnet,  as 
thus  improved,  la)?-  a  gift  to  science  and 
art  incomparably  more  valuable  than  the 
permanent  steel  magnet  could  ever  be. 
In  America,  from  the  beginning  of  electric 
telegraphy  until  now,  an  electromag- 
net has  been  the  indispensable  heart  of  the  apparatus. 
A  momentary  current  from  a  distant  station  is  received 
in  a  coil  of  copper  wire ;    that  instant   its   soft  iron  core 


Fig.  32. 
Sturgeon's  electromagnet. 


Fig.  33. 

Henry's  electro- 
magnet. 


106     THE  PRODUCTION   OF  ELECTRICITY 

becomes  a  magnet,  and  in  attracting  its  armature  gives  a 
signal. 

If  electricity  was   ever  to   take   its  place  beside  fire  as  a 

servant   of  equal  or  superior  value,  it  was  imperative  that 

an  electric  current  should   be   generated 

The  Dynamo  is  Born.     at    \()W    cost  ]lere     the    voltaic-   and     the 

thermo-batteries  had  failed  ;  both  chem- 
ical and  direct  thermal  action  proved  to  be  too  expensive 
for  any  but  limited  uses.  There  remained  but  one  avenue 
in  which  hope  lay  of  a  current  cheap  enough  to  be  used 
as  freely  as  flame — perchance,  indeed,  as  its  supplanter. 
Electricity  in  large  quantity  and  at  a  low  price  is  a  boon 
due  to  the  electromagnet,  which  is  essential  not  only  to  the 
telegraph,  but  to  the  dynamo  and  motor  as  well.  It  is 
these  devices  that  have  taken  electricity  from  the  seclusion 
of  the  laboratory  to  the  engine-rooms  and  workshops  of 
the  world.  Both  the  dynamo  and  motor  sprang  from  the 
investigations  of  Faraday  in  1831,  as  he  repeated  and  ex- 
tended the  inquiries  of  Orsted.  It  had  long  been  known 
that  a  steel  magnet  induces  magnetism  in  a  soft  iron  mass 
as  they  approach  each  other,  and  in  a  degree  determined 
by  the  proximity  of  the  two.  Faraday  discovered  that  the 
pr.mary.  like  is  true  in  the 

province   of  elec- 

srcoNDARy.  tricity.  "Letthere 

Fig.  34.  be      two      copper 

Electrical  induction.  wires,"     said     he, 

"  parallel  to  and  near  each  other.      Send  a  current  through 

the  first  and  a  momentary  current  is  induced  in  the  second 

(Fig.   34).      Vary  the  quantity  of  the   primary  current,  or 

break   it  off  completely,   and   at  once  there  is  a  response 

in  the  secondary  wire" 

lie  then  extended  his  researches  to  the  ties  which  bind 
magnetism  and  electricity.  Orsted  had  observed  that  .in 
electric   current   produces   motion   in   an    adjacent   magnet 


Fig.  27. 
Volta's  crown  of  cups. 


Fig.  35. 

Faraday's  magneto-electric  machine. 


THE    FIRST   DYNAMO 


107 


nicely  poised.  Faraday  developed  the  converse  truth — 
that  a  magnet  moved  near  a  conductor  induces  a  current 
therein.  That  here  was  a  means  of  generating  electricity 
by  mechanical  means  he  at  once  proceeded  to  show.  A 
disc  of  copper  a  foot  in  diameter,  and  about  a  fifth  of 
an  inch  in  thickness,  was  fastened  in  a  frame  so  as  to  be 
easily  turned  by  a  handle,  the  edge  of  the  metal  lying  be- 
tween and  close  to  the  poles  of  a  large  permanent  magnet 
(Fig.  35).  Two  conducting  wires  were  applied  to  the  disc, 
one  at  its  rim,  S,  the  other  at  its  axle,  N;  these  bore  away 
the  current  generated  as  the  disc  was  turned.  Here,  as  in 
all  similar  cases,  the  motion  of  a  conductor  in  the  field  of  a 
magnet  created  a  stream  of  electricity  equal  in  energy- 
value  to  the  mechanical  exertion  expended.  Faraday's 
apparatus,  simple  as  it  is  in  form,  is  the  parent  of  every 
dynamo  since  constructed ;  and  because  mechanical  power 
is  vastly  cheaper  than  chemical  energy  we  have  to  thank 
him  for  emanci- 
pating electricity 
as  an  agent  for 
common,  every- 
day tasks — some 
of  them,  indeed, 
once  within  the 
exclusive  province 
of  fire  itself. 

In  embodying 
Faraday's  discov- 
ery in  a  machine 
of  the  best  design,  the  first  step  was  taken  when  Dr.  Pacinotti, 
of  the  University  of  Pisa,  in  i860  shaped  an  armature  into 
the  form  of  a  ring.  Gramme,  about  eleven  years  later,  in- 
vented a  machine  in  which  this  ring  armature  formed  the 
chief  feature.  Fig.  36  shows  this  machine  as  a  simplified 
skeleton.     As  rotated  between  the  magnetic  poles,  N  and 


Fig.  36. 
Gramme  Machine. 


io8    THE  PRODUCTION  OF  ELECTRICITY 

S,  a  current  is  generated  in  the  wire  surrounding  the  ring, 
which  current  is  carried  off  by  the  wires  shown  just  within 
the  ring. 

We  should  note  in  passing  that  Faraday's  model  is  ca- 
pable of  rotation  if  a  current  be  applied  at  its  rim  and  axle; 
in  other  words,  the  machine  is  perfectly  reversible  and  may 
be  used  as  a  motor  if  a  current  is  required  to  yield  mechan- 
ical power.  The  motors  which  to-day  furnish  power  from 
currents  on  a  large  commercial  scale  are  little  else  than 
dynamos  reversed,  yet  the  reversal,  obvious  as  it  seems 
now,  was  not  adopted  until  1873,  although  it  was  known 
to  Jacobi  in  1850,  and  probably  to  Lenz  twelve  years  be- 
fore. In  1873  several  Gramme  dynamos  were  to  be  shown 
at  the  Vienna  Exposition.  A  workman,  seeing  a  pair  of 
loose  wires  near  one  of  the  machines,  connected  them  with 
it;  the  other  ends  of  the  wires  proved  to  be  bound  to  a 
dynamo  in  full  rotation,  its  source  of  power  being  a  steam- 
engine  near  by.  The  second  and  newly  attached  machine 
at  once  began  to  revolve  in  a  reverse  direction — as  a  motor. 
Thus,  in  all  likelihood  by  sheer  accident,  it  was  discovered 
that  one  dynamo  may  yield  in  mechanical  power  the 
electric  energy  sent  to  it  from  another  dynamo  at  a 
distance.  In  the  whole  realm  of  industrial  art  there  is  no 
more  striking  example  than  this  of  a  rule  that  works  both 
ways. 

In  its  developed  form  the  electric  motor  is  somewhat 
modified  from  the  dynamo  in  model;  both  of  them  in  their 
latest  and  beat  designs  come  short  of  perfect  efficiency  by 
only  2.J,  per  cent.  Using  a  steam-engine  or  a  water-wheel 
as  its  prime  mover,  the  dynamo  is  much  the  cheapest  means 
of  producing  electricity,  supplanting,  for  all  but  inconsider- 
able uses,  the  primary  chemical  cell  invented  by  Volta. 

Having  east  a  hasty  glance    at    the   principal    steps   in 

obtaining   a   current    with    more  and    more  economy,  let    us 

n  a  rapid  survey  of  its  applications,  first  of  all  taking 


DR.   YOUNG'S    INSIGHT    FAILS        109 

up   those  where   its   heat   is  turned  to  account,  in  singular 
rivalry  with  fire. 

But  before  we  pass  on  it  behooves  us  to  note  how  strictly 
the  ablest  men  are  the  children  of  their  own  day,  with  all 
its  limitations  of  horizon.  Among  English  physicists  the 
greatest  since  Newton  is  Dr.  Thomas  Young.  In  1807, 
thirteen  years  before  the  decisive  discovery  by  Orsted,  Dr. 
Young  wrote :  "  There  is  no  reason  to  imagine  any  imme- 
diate connection  between  electricity  and  magnetism,  except 
that  electricity  affects  the  conducting  powers  of  iron  or 
steel  for  magnetism  in  the  same  manner  as  heat  or  agi- 
tation." 1 

1  Lectures  on  Natural  Philosophy,  London  edition,  1845,  Vol.  I,  p.  538. 


CHAPTER    IX 

ELECTRIC    HEAT 

THERE  are  many  cases  where  a  task  of  so  much  mo- 
ment is  performed  by  a  little  heat  that  its  cost  need 
not  be  considered.      Hence  we  find  that  long  before  elec- 
tric   currents    were    cheapened    by    the 
From  the  Miner's      dynamo   there  was  noteworthy  emplov- 

Fuse  to  the 

Forge  and  Weld.  ment  of  the  high  temperatures  born  of 
electricity.  In  early  experiments  these 
temperatures  were  observed  as  a  conducting  wire  was 
narrowed  in  diameter.  When  for  an  inch  or  two  it  was  re- 
duced to  extreme  fineness,  it  could  there  be  fused  by  a  cur- 
rent as  by  a  furnace  breath,  through  increased  local  resis- 
tance. The  molten  drops  betrayed  as  they  fell  that  the 
new  agent,  electricity,  was  no  other  than  the  old  servant, 
heat,  in  an  easily  discarded  dress.  The  miner  hail  long 
been  vexed  by  the  uncertainty  and  hazard  of  fuses  lighted 
by  common  fire,  both  dampness  and  rupture  contributing  to 
th<-  frequency  of  serious  hurt  and  damage.  With  electric 
heat  led  into  a  fine  wire  he  could  now  fire  a  fuse  with  per- 
fect safety  at  any  distance  he  pleased,  and  blast  a  rock  at 
as  many  points  as  lie  chose  all  at  the  same  moment,  with 
an  effect  otherwise  impossible. 

The  gunner  soon  learned  the  miner's  lesson.     In  a  battle 

i   a  whole   broadside   may  he  directed   upon  a  single 

turret  "I  the  enemy's  fleet,  and  fired  with  a  destructiveness 

no 


SHAPING    METALS 


1 1 1 


new  in  the  art  of  war.  If  the  gun-decks  of  a  cruiser  are 
so  enveloped  in  smoke  that  the  foe  cannot  be  seen  by  the 
men  at  the  guns,  the  firing  may  be  directed  by  an  officer 
far  enough  away  to  be  in  clear  air.  In  like  manner  the 
submarine  mines  and  the  torpedoes  impressed  into  defence, 
or  attack,  are  exploded  at  the  commander's  nod  by  a  tele- 
graph-key a  mile  or  two  off.  The  surgeon,  who  is  never 
far  away  when  the  gunner  and  torpedo  crew  are  busy,  is 
equally  served  by  electric  heat,  employing  it  as  he  does  for 
a  delicate  cautery. 

In  the  arts  of  peace  electric  heat,  even  at  comparatively 
low  temperatures,  is  widely  useful  since  its  cheap  produc- 
tion by  the  dynamo.  A  current  of  dangerously  high  ten- 
sion may  sometimes  by  accident  enter  an  instrument  or 
machine;  but  if  in  the  gateway  it  must  traverse  a  strip  of 
lead  and  tin  alloy,  the  metal  will  melt  away,  and  the  current 
thus  interrupted  can  do  no  harm.  When  severe  frost  has 
frozen  a  water-pipe  an  electric  current  warms  the  metal 
and  thaws  the  ice  much  more  quickly 
and  conveniently  than  flame.  In  the 
manufacture  of  fine  varnishes,  in  the 
reduction  of  sulphide  nickel  ores, 
in  tempering  metals,  it  is  necessary 
to  maintain  a  certain  temperature 
and  guard  against  its  slightest  in- 
crease ;  in  all  such  tasks  the  easily 
regulated  heat  of  electric  origin 
leaves  nothing  to  be  desired.  The 
manufacture  of  felt  hats  requires  a 
sustained  heat  at  definite  temperatures;  this  is  supplied 
much  more  satisfactorily  by  electric  coils  than  by  gas-flames. 

Metal-workers  adopt  electric  heat  with  peculiar  gain. 
When  a  strip  or  tube  of  iron,  copper,  or  brass  is  to  be  bent, 
twisted,  coiled,  or  hammered,  the  work  is  easy  if  the  metal 
is  first  softened  by  electric  heat.      Hooks,  links,  axes,  and 


Fig.  37. 

Metal  shaped  under 

electric  heat. 


112  ELECTRIC    HEAT 

other  tools  are  formed  as  readily  as  If  in  wax  (Fig.  37). 
In  this  branch  of  industry  the  expert  may  excite  the  on- 
looker's wonder  by  tying  a  knot  in  a  stout  rod  of  steel  as 
if  he  were  manipulating  a  yard  or  two  of  rope.  A  new 
electric  machine  brings  a  rivet  to  redness,  and,  just  before 
it  might  melt,  secures  it  in  place  by  extreme  pressure. 

Temperatures  higher  still  open  the  way  to  the  electric 
welder.  The  flame  of  a  forge  or  a  furnace  is  often  difficult 
to  apply,  especially  when  large  masses  of  metal  have  to  be 
treated.  Let  two  pieces  of  metal,  however  large  and 
irregular  in  form,  be  forced  together  within  the  clamps  of 
an  Elihu  Thomson  machine,  and  at  their  point  of  contact 
a  welding  heat  is  developed  precisely  where  it  is  wanted. 
When  the  broken  blade  of  a  steamship's  propeller  is  to  be 
repaired,  or  the  standing  rigging  of  a  ship  is  to  be  united, 
or  the  rails  of  a  street-railroad  are  to  become  a  continuous 
line  of  metal,  the  electric  welder  can  be  taken  to  its  work 
instead  of  the  work  having  to  go  to  a  stationary  welder. 

Within  the  walls  of  a  factory  this  appliance  is  quite  as 
useful  and  even  more  versatile.  It  joins  the  tires  of  bi- 
cycles, carriages,  and  wagons  ;  it  unites  tubes,  pipes,  barrels, 
and  band-saws;  for  the  telegraph  and  the  telephone  it 
supersedes  the  old  and  imperfect  splicing  by  a  joint  and  so 

enables  lines  of  direct  com- 

munication  to  be  much 
longer  than  before  (Fig. 
58).        In    lumber-mills    it 

The  old  weld  and  the  new. 

resets  a  tooth  accidentally 
torn  from  a  saw,  and  rarely  does  the  metal  ever  part 
again  at  the  same  point  of  stress.  In  the  service  oi 
war  it  binds  a  tip  of  hardened  metal  to  the  soft  ease  of 
a  shrapnel  shell,  and  forms  into  a  single  mas--  the  ponderous 
anchor  of  a  flag-ship.  All  this  gain  in  convenience  and 
cleanliness,  accessibility  and  economy,  arises  from  having 
intense  heat  without  flame,  and  from  being  able  to  apply  it  at 


ARC    IN    METAL-WORKING  113 

one  particular  point  and  no  other.  As  a  consequence,  fire 
is  dispossessed  from  many  tasks  which  until  our  day  it  was 
believed  that  only  fire  could  perform.  Anothei  supplant- 
ing of  the  ancient  work  of  flame  is  due  to  the  fact  that  its 
temperatures  are  far  outdistanced  by  those  of  electricity. 

The  electric  arc  as  we  see  it  glowing  in  the  thorough- 
fares of  cities  has  much  the  appearance  of  exceedingly 
brilliant  flame.  The  Bernardos  process 
uses  this  arc  for  metal-working  with  ex-  The  Arc's  Fierce  Heat, 
cellent  results.  A  rod  of  carbon  in  an 
operator's  hand  forms  one  pole  of  the  circuit,  the  metal  to 
be  softened  or  melted  forms  the  other  pole.  In  the  Slaw- 
ianoff  method,  a  metal  rod  forms  the  second  pole ;  as  its 
molten  drops  fall  upon  the  surface  to  be  welded,  the  effect 
is  usually  preferable  to  that  of  Bernardos.  Both  plans  are 
extensively  employed  in  the  repair-shops  of  the  Russian 
government  railroads.  The  harveyised  steel  for  armour- 
plates  is  so  hard  as  to  resist  drilling  for  the  insertion  of  its 
bolts ;  the  electric  arc  in  a  moment  reduces  the  metal  to 
plasticity  at  the  point  where  the  drill  is  to  perform  its  duty. 
A  boiler-plate  ruptured  by  accident  is  fused  like  wax  by 
treatment  of  a  little  longer  duration,  while  sheet  metal  is 
cut  away  as  if  it  were  so  much  paper.  Brazing,  even  on  a 
large  scale,  is  accomplished  with  celerity  and  cleanliness. 
Were  it  not  for  the  blinding  glare  of  the  arc  these  uses  of 
it  would  be  less  uncommon  than  they  are. 

In  the  Kroll  process  of  glass-making,  recently  tested  at 
Cologne,  an  electric  arc  replaces  flame  with  manifold  advan- 
tages. The  materials  are  fused  in  fifteen  minutes  instead 
of  in  thirty  hours;  two-fifths  of  the  fuel  is  saved;  there  is 
no  risk  of  dirt  or  ashes  falling  into  the  glass ;  and  on 
Sundays  and  holidays  work  may  be  stopped  with  no  loss 
whatever,  as  there  are  no  bulky  and  expensive  furnaces  to 
be  cooled  down. 

As  a  rule  water  quenches  fire.     What  shall  we  say  when 


H4 


ELECTRIC    HEAT 


we  see  a  bar  of  cold  iron  dipped  into  a  bath  of  water  and 
quickly  rise  to  a  white  heat?  The  mystery  is  solved  when 
we  observe  that  one  pole  of  a  powerful  battery  or  dynamo 
is  connected  with  the  bar,  while  the  other  pole  is  attached 

to  the  lead  lining  of  the  bath. 
The  water  as  decomposed  by  the 
jffT^L  current  deposits  a  film  of  hydro- 
gen on  the  surface  of  the  iron, 
and  the  high  resistance  of  the 
gives  rise  to  so  intense  a  heat  as 
virtually  to  create  an  electric  arc. 
This  arc,  always  unquenchable  by 
water,  rapidly  raises  the  metal  to 
a  very  high  temperature.  Sal- 
soda  is  added  to  the  liquid  so  as 
to  improve  its  conduction  of  the  current;  borax  also  is 
dissolved  in  liberal  quantities  to  remove  any  oxide  which 
may  be  formed  (Fig.  39). 

Beyond  the  temperatures  suited  to  welding,  glass-making, 
or  forging,  the  electric  arc  produces  heat  more  intense  than 
any  other  at  the  chemist's  disposal  (Fig.  40).  This  heat  is 
preferable  to  that  of  flame  in  that  it  can  be  carried  into 
a  crucible  through  almost  impermeable  walls  of  chalk  or 
gypsum,  so  as  to  be  free  from  the  loss  by  radiation  inevi- 
table  to   a   blaze.      When   a   molten         r — . ™ 

<  ■  >re  of  metal  is  surrounded  by  a  cake    jf5SE^_j£^=^^ 
of  ore  of  low  conductivity,  tempera- 
tures  may    be    reached,   and    effects 


Fig.  39. 
Water-tank  electric  forge. 


Fig.  40. 

Electric  furnace. 
produced,     impossible     to     crucibles   A  and H,  carbon  electrodes ; 

heated   from   outside.  ' ,lM" 

( larborundum  is  one  of  the  recent  creations  ^i  the  electric 

crucible.      This  compound  of  carbon  and  silicon  ranks  next 

to  the  diamond  in  hardness,  and  has,  therefore,  high  value 

as  an  abrasive.      Its  vitrified  grinding-wheels  employ  pi 

lain  as  a  bond  ;  a  little  iron  effects  direct  union  between  the 


CARBORUNDUM  115 

porcelain  and  the  carborundum  particles ;  they  cut  the 
hardest  steel  so  quickly  as  not  to  case-harden  or  draw  the 
temper  of  a  tool,  the  metal  is  brought  to  an  edge  before  it 
has  time  to  be  heated.  Carborundum  has  a  wide  variety 
of  other  uses:  it  grinds  and  polishes  granite;  it  turns  out 
steel  balls  for  bicycle  and  other  bearings  ;  it  makes  the  rolls 
through  which  pulp  is  squeezed  in  paper-mills,  it  smooths 
the  biscuit-ware  in  potteries.  This  new  substitute  for  em- 
ery and  corundum  is  manufactured  at  Niagara  Falls  on  a 
huge  scale  from  coke,  sand,  salt,  and  sawdust,  materials 
strangely  different  from  their  offspring.  When  one-half  of 
1  per  cent,  of  carborundum  is  added  to  steel,  the  metal 
becomes  more  fluid  and  ductile,  with  escape  from  the  risks 
of  honeycomb.  Mr.  E.  G.  Acheson,  who  invented  the 
carborundum  furnace,  has  recently  adapted  electric  tem- 
peratures to  the  production  of  graphite  from  bituminous 
coal.  Graphite  as  a  product  of  the  mine  has  long  been  used 
for  pencils,  for  crucibles,  and  as  a  lubricant.  The  carbons 
employed  by  the  chemist  as  his  electrodes  in  the  manufac- 
ture of  alkalis  and  other  compounds,  and  by  the  engineer 
for  his  dynamo-  and  motor-brushes,  are  lengthened  in  life 
many  times  when  graphitised  by  the  Acheson  method. 
Another  product  of  electric  heat  which  is  fast  rising  into 
commercial  importance  is  carbide  of  calcium,  manufactured 
from  quick-lime  and  coke.  When  placed  in  water,  this 
compound  sets  free  acetylene,  a  gas  of  high  illuminating 
power,  rich  in  photographic  rays. 

Professor  Henri  Moissan,  in  his  electric  furnace,  has 
brought  forth  a  series  of  perfectly  crystallised  compounds, 
borides,  silicides,  and  carbides  of  metals  which,  from  their 
demand  for  the  fiercest  natal  heat,  are  believed  to  represent 
the  foundation-stones  of  our  planet.  Compounds,  such  as 
those  of  chromium  and  tungsten,  of  a  refractoriness  which 
defies  every  other  furnace,  are  readily  separated  by  Pro- 
fessor  Moissan  in   his  electric   crucibles,  while   silicon  and 


u 6  ELECTRIC    HEAT 

carbon  are  volatilised,  and  lime,  zirconia,  and  silica  are  sub- 
limed without  difficulty.  In  the  reduction  of  highly  resis- 
tant compounds  recourse  is  had,  as  in  the  case  of  fire,  to  the 
presence  of  carbon,  which,  by  its  intense  affinity  for  oxygen, 
promotes  the  chemical  separation. 

As  M.  Moissan  one  day  pondered  the  fact  that  small 
diamonds  are  sometimes  found  in  meteoric  iron,  he  asked, 
Can  their  creation  in  similar  metal  be  repeated  ?  He  rea- 
soned that  the  meteorite  had  probably  sustained  great  pres- 
sure as  well  as  a  high  temperature,  and  that  both  conjoined 
had  given  birth  to  these  little  gems.  He  endeavoured  to 
recall  in  the  laboratory  what  had  probably  occurred  in  the 
history  of  the  aerolite.  Boiling  a  crucible  of  iron  in  his 
electric  furnace,  he  dropped  into  the  seething  mass  a  goodly 
lump  of  carbon  in  the  form  of  coke;  it  was  dissolved  as 
greedily  as  sugar  is  by  hot  tea.  He  then  placed  masses  of 
the  molten  mixture  in  cold  water;  suddenly  shrunken  as 
they  were,  an  intense  pressure  was  exerted  by  the  outer 
part  of  each  mass  upon  its  core.  When  all  had  cooled 
down  he  had  succeeded  in  making  some  minute  diamonds; 
the  path  of  nature  in  the  production  of  the  gems  of  the 
mine  had  been  clearly  retraced.  Fortunately  for  the 
owners  of  such  mines,  the  electric  method  has  not  yet  pro- 
duced any  stones  large  enough  to  be  precious  in  a  com- 
mercial sense. 

M.  Moissan  has  further  devised  a  plan  for  separating 
calcium  from  its  compounds,  which  may  have  an  important 
bearing  upon  agriculture.  He  finds  that  calcium  enters 
readily  into  combination  with  nitrogen,  and  that  from  the 
nitride  so  formed  it  is  easy  to  make  ammonia.  If  con- 
din  ted  on  a  scale  sufficiently  large,  this  process  of  the  lab- 
oratory may  pass  to  the  manufactory,  and  prove  cheap 
enough  to  supersede  all  other  modes  of  obtaining  a  capital 
ferl  iliser. 

The    intense    flame  of    the  blowpipe,  SO    readily  directed 


A    TWO-EDGED    SWORD 


!»7 


Fig.  41. 

Electric  blowpipe. 


hither  and  thither,  has  its  counterpart  in  an  electrical  device 
due,  in  its  original  form,  to  Dr.  Zorener  of  Berlin.  He 
noticed  that  an  electric  arc  can  be  deflected  by  a  strong 
magnet  much  as  a  common  blowpipe  responds  to  the 
breath.  In  Fig.  41  an  electromagnet  D 
pushes  out,  as  if  by  a  light  breeze,  the  arc 
formed  between  the  two  carbon  poles  B 
and  C.  Lieutenant  Jarvis  Patton  draws 
attention  to  the  perfect  control  of  an  arc 
which  such  an  electromagnet  affords. 
When  an  arc  has  fused  part  of  a  metallic 
charge  in  a  crucible  or  furnace,  it  has  di- 
minished, by  aggregation,  the  resistance 
of  that  particular  portion  of  the  whole 
mass,  and  because  its  path  just  there  is 
freer  than  elsewhere  it  continues  to  tra- 
verse it  idly  and  uselessly.  Directed  by  a  magnet,  the 
arc  may  now  be  shifted  to  fresh  surfaces  of  material  where 
its  action  is  most  required.1 

When  the  metallurgist  dismisses  flame  in  favour  of  elec- 
tric heat  an  old  annoyance  takes  its  departure.  Castings 
made  in  the  ordinary  way  are  exposed  to  the  air  and  often 
contain  blow-holes,  while  they  lack  homogeneity  and  sharp- 
ness. When  the  metals  are  fused  and  cast  by  electricity 
in  a  vacuum,  these  defects  disappear  and  a  new  perfection 
both  of  substance  and  surface  is  attained. 

Electricity  has   a  parting  power  which  it  retains  in  the 
presence  of  heat,  even   of  heat  which   it  may   itself  have 
created ;      electricity,     therefore,      when 
added  to  heat,  hands  the  chemist  a  two-    a  Twofold  Disjoiner. 
edged     sword     of    irresistible     cleaving 
might.      Armed  with  it,  he  disjoins  fused  salts  as  a  flourish- 
ing industry,   so   that   elements   once   rare  and   costly   are 
marketed  at  prices  low  and  steadily  falling.      Aluminium, 

1  Electrical  World,  October  22,  1898. 


n8  ELECTRIC    HEAT 

discovered  by  Wohler  in  [828,  was  for  fifty  years  so  scarce 
and  dear  as  to  be  formed  into  jewellery  ;  to-day  the  metal 
is  cheap  enough  to  find  a  ready  sale  as  kitchen  ware. 
Other  metals  and  metalloids  now  surrendering-  themselves 
to  the  joint  attack  of  heat  and  electricity  are  nickel, 
sodium,  phosphorus,  and  glucinum.  The  last-named  of 
these,  glucinum,  or  beryllium,  has  remarkable  qualities. 
It  is  lighter  than  aluminium,  is  not  oxidised  in  any  ordi- 
nary exposure,  while  its  electrical  conductivity  exceeds 
that  of  copper.  If  its  production  should  be  constantly 
cheapened,  as  has  been  the  case  with  aluminium,  this  valu- 
able metal  would  find  extensive  employment  in  the  arts. 

As  with  elements,  so  with  compounds  of  equal  industrial 
importance.  In  the  Acker  process  now  employed  at 
Niagara  Falls,  caustic  soda  is  obtained  from  a  molten 
electrolyte  instead  of  from  a  solution  of  ordinary  tem- 
perature. The  current  required  is  greater  than  where 
brine  is  decomposed,  because  the  electrolyte  is  kept  in  a 
molten  state  by  the  very  current  which  also  decomposes  it. 
But  this  additional  cost  is  more  than  offset  by  the  fact  that 
the  caustic  soda  is  obtained  directly  in  an  anhydrous  state 
ready  for  the  market,  obviating  the  evaporating  and  boil- 
ing-down process  heretofore  essential. 

Useful  as  electric  heat  is  to  the  metal-worker  and  the 
chemist,  may  it  not  be  equally  so  to  that  large  public  who 

employ  heat  in  every-day  tasks  of 
The  Field  (or  Conquest,  warming  and  cooking?      To  answer  this 

question,  let  us  approach  an  electrolier 
bearing  upon  its  branches  twelve  incandescent  lamps,  each 
of  sixteen-candle  power,  such  as  are  usually  employed  at  a 
desk  or  in  a  workshop.  To  supply  these  lamps  with  cur- 
rent one  horse-power  is  being  consumed  at  the  central 
lighting-Station  near  by,  and  yet  as  one  holds  one's  hand 
above  the  bulbs  their  wanning  effect  is  no  greater  than  if 
three  or  four  ordinary  candles  were  alight. 


FLAME   SUPPLANTED  119 

In  applying  heat  to  the  generation  of  mechanical  power 
we  have  already  noted  how  serious  are  the  wastes.  In  the 
very  highest  efficiency  on  record  the  losses  are  nearly 
80  per  cent. ;  in  ordinary  cases  they  exceed  90  per  cent. 
When  this  large  deduction  is  taken  into  account  it  is 
clear  that,  except  for  minor  uses,  the  employment  of 
electricity  for  warming  and  cooking  is  usually  quite  .out 
of  the  question.  To  warm  a  street-car  by  electricity  is 
economical  because  the  car  is  of  dimensions  so  contracted 
that  but  little  heat  suffices,  while  the  space  a  stove  would 
occupy  is  left  free  to  hold  a  passenger.  In  cooking  for  an 
invalid,  where  slight  extra  cost  need  not  be  considered, 
electricity  answers  better  than  fire.  One  of  the  theatres 
in  London  has  been  warmed  by  electricity  since  1894;  its 
auditorium  is  small,  and  a  comparatively  slight  rise  in  tem- 
perature is  enough  for  the  needs  of  an  English  winter. 

Where  electricity  can  be  produced  very  cheaply  by  water- 
power,  we  are  shown  what  may  be  expected  from  a  current 
should  it  ever  be  as  cheaply  derived  from  coal.  At  the  Car- 
melite Hospice,  on  the  Canadian  side  of  Niagara  Falls,  a  cur- 
rent of  seventy-five  horse-power  is  bought  for  heating  pur- 
poses at  a  rate  equal  to  but  $5  a  year  per  horse-power.  In 
winter,  when  heating  is  in  request,  the  dynamos  are  not  in 
demand  for  the  railroad  work  which  occupies  them  in 
summer. 

Electric  heat,  as  here  supplied,  is  incomparably  superior 
to  flame :  it  can  be  turned  on  or  off  by  a  touch  ;  it  is  safe 
as  no  other  heat  is  safe ;  it  is  unaccompanied  by  smoke  or 
dust ;  all  its  appliances  are  as  portable  as  a  hand-lamp  ;  and 
an  automatic  regulator  may  control  its  temperature  and 
adjust  it  either  to  simmering  a  bowl  of  gruel  or  baking  a 
joint.  Just  so  soon  as  electricity  can  be  won  from  fuels 
with  an  approach  to  full  efficiency,  mankind  will  enter  upon 
the  ideal,  and  probably  the  ultimate,  means  of  heating  and 
cooking. 


i2o  ELECTRIC    HEAT 

Burdened  though  it  is  by  the  heavy  tolls  of  the  steam- 
engine,  electricity  has  plainly  entered  the  lists  of  art  as  a 

multiplier  of  all  the  gifts  of  flame.     Heat, 

Flame  when  it  springs  from  an  electric  source, 

Supplanted.  iias   a    range    ()f   applicability    denied    to 

fire.  It  goes  where  fire  is  refused  admit- 
tance and  there  does  its  work  with  unparalleled  efficiency. 
Electric  heat  creates  new  temperatures,  has  a  nicety 
and  certainty  of  touch  all  its  own ;  joining  hands  with 
the  decomposing  power  of  the  furnace,  it  redoubles  all 
the  triumphs  of  that  old  invention.  Because  electric 
heat  is  in  so  many  ways  preferable  to  flame,  it  has  suit- 
planted  it  in  man\r  important  fields,  and  would  supersede 
it  in  every  other  were  it  producible  with  economy.  Let 
electricity  spring  from  fuels  with  but  inconsiderable  loss 
and  we  shall  see  them  used  for  little  else  than  to  create 
electric  currents,  so  much  preferable  in  their  heating  effects 
to  fire. 

Until  this  generation  flame  alone  was  the  source  not  only 
of  heat,  but  of  the  beam  of  candle,  lamp,  and  gas-jet. 
We  are  thus  led  to  consider  electricity  as  a  light-bringer,  in 
which  role  it  once  again  plays  the  part  of  a  supplanter. 


CHAPTER   X     • 

ELECTRIC    LIGHT 

IN    the    sparks   which   were    among    the    first    observed 
effects  of  electricity  lay  much  promise,  for  all  that  they 
were  too  faint  and   fleeting  to   be   seriously  considered  as 
sources   of  light.      As   soon  as  frictional 
machines  made  way  for  the  voltaic  bat-  New  Lamps 

tery  there  was  hope  that  the  new  means  for  old- 

of  producing  a  current  might  yield  a 
beam  constant  and  bright  enough  to  be  worth  having.  A 
metallic  circuit  had  only  to  be  broken  and  rejoined  to  emit 
a  succession  of  brilliant  sparks,  such  as  we  see  sent  forth 
to-day  from  the  trolley-wheel  as  it  jolts  away  from  its  wire. 
But,  as  in  so  many  other  high  services,  carbon  was  to  prove 
itself  in  possession  of  qualities  denied  to  any  other  element. 
In  1810,  Humphry  Davy,  at  the  Royal  Institution  in 
London,  made  two  pieces  of  carbon  the  terminals  of  a  bat- 
tery of  two  thousand  cells ;  he  withdrew  these  carbons  by 
three  inches  of  space,  to  find  the  gap  between  them  spanned 
by  a  brilliant  arc  of  light — the  parent  beam  of  every  arc- 
lamp  that  has  since  shone  forth.  In  common  with 
other  offspring  of  electricity,  this  sunlike  ray  was  very 
costly  in  the  early  days  when  zinc  was  its  fuel,  so  that  it 
was  little  known  beyond  the  walls  of  a  laboratory  or  a  lec- 
ture-room.     With   the   cheap   current  due   to   the  dynamo 

the  arc-light  at   once   sprang  into  popularity,  as   its  auto- 

121 


122  ELECTRIC  LIGHT 

matic  regulation  was  slowly  perfected  by  a  succession  of 
inventors,  while  its  carbon  rods  were  brought  at  last  to  a 
high  standard  of  purity  and  trustworthiness.  Among  the 
men  who  have  simplified  the  mechanism  of  arc-lighting, 
the  chief  is  Mr.  Charles  F.  Brush  of  Cleveland. 

In  its  conversion  of  energy  into  light  the  arc-lamp  is  the 
most  effective  of  all  devices,  rising  as  it  does  to  an  efficiency 
of  13  per  cent.,  as  compared  with  5  per  cent,  on  the 
part  of  the  incandescent  bulb.  Petroleum,  in  a  lamp  of 
the  best  design,  has  a  luminous  efficiency  of  but  2  per 
cent.,  a  sperm  candle  1^  per  cent.,  a  gas-flame  burning 
57  cubic  feet  an  hour,  with  a  Welsbach  mantle,  2,",, 
per  cent.  The  light  from  illuminating  gas  may  be 
doubled  if,  instead  of  burning  it  in  ordinary  jets,  the 
gas  is  employed  to  drive  a  gas-engine,  an  electric  cur- 
rent derived  therefrom  being  sent  into  incandescent 
lamps.  In  the  house  of  the  American  Society  of  Civil 
Engineers,  New  York,  five  hundred  incandescent  lamps 
are  maintained  from  a  gas-engine  at  a  cost  for  fuel  and 
attendance  about  one-half  that  of  a  street  current.  In 
such  an  installation  the  electrician  exhibits  the  audacity 
of  a  supplanter,  employing  an  electric  spark  to  ignite  the 
successive  charges  in  the  cylinder  of  gas  and  air  of  his 
engine. 

The  arc-light,  for  all  that  its  economy  is  more  than 
double  that  of  the  incandescent  bulb,  has  serious  disad- 
vantages. It  cannot  be  produced  on  a  small  scale,  and 
is  therefore  too  brilliant  for  ordinary  rooms;  and  as  its  rays 
sent  forth  from  a  single  point,  they  form  shadows  ol 
sharp  and  unpleasant  definition.  An  opal  globe,  in  redu- 
cing the  glare  <»f  an  arc-lamp,  absorbs  as  much  as  45  to  65 
per  cent,  of  the  rays,  a  large  subtraction  from  the  value  of 
the  device.  In  considering  these  objections  it  was  remem- 
1  that  the  electric  current  had  long  been  bringing  the 
short  metal  wires  of  the  miner's  fuse  to  glowing  radiance: 


RESEMBLES   A   BLAZE  123 

why  not  copy  that  contrivance  so  as  to  obtain  a  moderate 
light  from  a  continuous  conductor,  free  from  the  necessity 
for  any  regulating  mechanism?  The  question  was  easy  to 
ask,  but  before  it  was  rightly  answered  there  was  much  to 
learn. 

A  blazing  pine-knot  or  the  glowing  embers  of  a  hearth 
have,  in  their  time,  enabled  a  good  many  men  and  women 
to    continue    their   tasks  of   the  day,   to 
read  their  books,  to  write    their  letters,       The  incandescent 
to  knit  and  sew.      Primitive  though  such  Lamp, 

illumination  may  be,  it  has  something  in 
common  with  the  beam  of  the  incandescent  lamp.  Let 
the  coals  of  a  grate  be  shining  a  dull  red,  send  a  quick 
draught  of  air  upon  them  from  a  pair  of  bellows,  and 
forthwith  they  glow  vividly.  A  comparatively  small  eleva- 
tion of  temperature  is  accompanied  by  a  remarkable  in- 
crease of  light.  This  was  borne  out  in  a  discouraging  way 
in  the  early  experiments  with  metals  intended  to  yield  light 
when  white-hot.  Before  iron,  platinum,  or  iridium  could 
be  brought  to  a  satisfactory  radiance,  the  intensity  of  elec- 
tric heat  had  softened  or  even  melted  the  wire. 

In  1841  it  occurred  to  Frederick  de  Moleyn,  an  English- 
man, that  improvement  lay  in  inclosing  the  metallic  wire 
in  a  glass  bulb  from  which  nearly  all  the  air  had  been  ex- 
hausted. His  device  had  merit,  but  did  not  overcome  the 
whole  difficulty.  Two  of  its  advantages  were  clear  :  it  pre- 
served his  wire  from  oxidation,  and  when  platinum  was  em- 
ployed there  could  be  no  troublesome  absorption  by  its 
surface  of  atmospheric  gases.  The  main  fault  lay  in  the 
use  of  any  metal  at  all  as  the  substance  to  be  set  aglow ; 
and  yet,  because  his  vacuous  bulb  is  essential  to  the  incan- 
descent lamp  of  to-day,  De  Moleyn  deserves  to  be  remem- 
bered as  among  the  men  who  have  made  that  lamp  possible. 

An  American   inventor,  J.  W.  Starr,  saw  what  was  the 
matter  with  De  Moleyn's  contrivance.      He  knew  that  car- 


124 


ELECTRIC    LIGHT 


bon  was  giving  a  superb  light  in  the  arc-lam]),  and  Ik-  felt 
certain  that  the  same  element  could  be  substituted  with 
profit  for  metallic  wires.  In  association  with  King,  an 
Englishman,  he  produced  a  lamp  which  in  essence  is  the 
lamp  of  to-day,  employing  a  slender  rod  of  car- 
bon, A,  clamped  at  its  ends  to  metallic  conduc- 
tors, C  and  D,  and  placed  in  a  vacuum  above  the 
mercury  in  a  barometer  tube  (Fig.  42). 

This   rod  of  the   Starr-King   lamp  was  slender, 
!   but    not    slender    enough.      When    the    dynamo 
cheapened  electricity  so  much  as  to  revive  inter- 
est in  the   invention,   it   became  clear  that  it  was 
not  a  rod  that  was  needed,  but  a  mere  thread  or 
fibre.      For  the   discovery  and   treatment  of  suit- 
able forms  of  carbon,  and  for  the  mechanical  re- 
finements requisite   for   complete  success  in  their 
use,  the  principal  credit   is  due  to  Thomas  Aha 
Edison.      The  quest  for  proper  filaments  occupied 
him  for  years  and  demanded  the  most  generous 
Fig.  42.     outlay.       Every    characteristic    North    American 
First  in-     fibre  was  tested  in  vain,   and   explorers  were  de- 
candescent   Spatched    to    Brazil,    to    Africa,   to   gather   other 

lamp.  .        .  .  .  .  a        1 

fibres  in  the  widest  variety.  At  the  end  of  many 
thousand  experiments,  finely  divided  and  shaped  strips  of 
bamboo  gave  gratifying  results. 

Further  success  came  to  him,  to  J.  W.  Swan  of  New- 
castle-on-Tyne,  and  to  other  inventors,  when  art  as  well  as 
nature  was  laid  under  contribution.  Paper  and  threads  of 
cotton  and  silk  were  charred  with  scrupulous  care,  while 
carbon  of  the  finest  grain  reduced  to  powder  was  moulded 
into  delicate  threads  under  severe  pressure.  The  chemists 
were  next  enlisted  ;  for  what  is  chemist!)-  but  the  me- 
chanics of  the  atom  instead  of  the  mass?  Pure  cellulose 
was  dissolved  in  zinc  chloride,  and  forced  through  narrow- 
dies  into  alcohol,  which   transformed  it  to  a  solid  thread. 


FILAMENTS    PERFECTED  125 

Celluloid  was  suitably  bathed,  modified,  and  shaped  into 
filaments  for  a  carbonising  process.  These  and  similar 
methods,  some  of  them  trade  secrets,  are  to-day  producing 
lamp-threads  of  high  merit,  each  adapted  to  its  particular 
line  of  duty,  and  superseding  bamboo. 

At  first  no  filament  lasted  for  more  than  fifty  hours  of 
service,  making  the  cost  of  renewing  lamps  as  great  as  the 
expense  of  current.  In  casting  about  for  the  cause  of  this 
lamentable  mortality  it  was  noticed  that  the  filaments 
glowed  more  brightly  at  some  points  than  at  others,  indi- 
cating a  variation  in  their  thickness.  Could  a  remedy  be 
found  by  making  them  of  uniform  diameter?  Fortunately, 
yes.  Several  years  before  that  time,  M.  Duprez,  a  French 
chemist,  had  recorded  one  of  those  observations  so  com- 
mon in  science,  which  at  first  seem  merely  curious,  but 
which  afterward  point  a  way  out  of  some  pressing  difficulty. 
He  remarked  that  in  an  atmosphere  of  hydrocarbon  a 
heated  stick  of  carbon  received  upon  its  surface  a  deposit 
of  an  extremely  dense  form  of  the  same  element.  Sawyer 
and  Mann  here  found  a  capital  means  of  lengthening  the  life 
of  the  filament.  Immersing  it  while  luminous  in  a  heavy 
hydrocarbon  gas  or  liquid,  it  took  on  a  solid  coating,  and 
where  the  filament  was  thinnest,  and  therefore  hottest,  the 
deposit  became  thickest.  In  this  ingenious  way  the  thread 
was  bidden  to  repair  its  own  defects,  and  took  a  bound 
toward  virtual  perfection.  The  squirted  filaments  of  to-day 
receive  in  a  similar  manner  a  dense  coating  of  graphitic 
carbon,  at  once  more  durable  and  more  light-giving  than  its 
basis  of  amorphous  carbon. 

To  a  further  refinement  of  ingenuity  the  incandescent 
lamp  owes  another  feature  of  its  excellence.  To  be  efficient 
it  is  needful  that  the  air  be  excluded  as  thoroughly  as  pos- 
sible from  its  bulb.  Any  oxygen  that  remains  will  combine 
at  once  with  the  carbon  of  the  thread  to  shorten  its  life.  Not- 
withstanding his  use  of  the  best  pumps,  Mr.  Swan  detected 


126  ELECTRIC    LIGHT 

that  his  filaments  were  attacked  by  oxygen,  and  in  a  quan- 
tity greater  than  could  possibly  remain  in  a  bulb  after  the 
well-nigh  complete  exhaustion  of  its  air.  It  occurred  to 
him  that  perchance  a  little  oxygen  had  been  left  in  the 
substance  of  the  filament  itself,  for  he  well  knew  how- 
strong  is  the  affinity  between  gases  and  the  porous  forms 
of  carbon.  It  is  this  occluding  or  hiding  power  which 
gives  charcoal  its  usefulness  in  preserving  foods  by  absorp- 
tion of  deleterious  gases.  Thought  he,  It  may  be  that  if  the 
filament  were  kept  aglow  during  the  pumping  operation, 
its  oxygen  would  be  dislodged  and  removed  with  the  free 
air  of  the  bulb.  Experiment  proved  the  soundness  of  his 
surmise,  and  lamp-making  was  advanced  by  another  im- 
portant step.  To-day  a  chemical  absorption  of  the  air 
from  a  lamp  occupies  one  minute;  at  first  for  this  task  a 
pump  required  five  hours. 

In  passing  the  wires  bearing  a  current  through  the  glass 
of  a  lamp,  a  perplexing  difficulty  arose.  As  those  wires 
were  warmed  and  cooled  when  a  current  was  established  or 
cut  off,  they  tended  to  tear  themselves  away  from  the  glass 
in  which  they  were  embedded.  This  was  overcome  on  dis- 
covering that  platinum  when  heated  has  much  the  same 
rate  of  expansibility  as  glass.  Who  shall  say  that  the 
ascertaining  any  property  of  matter  whatever  is  mere  idle 
curiosity?  When  a  particular  substance  is  wanted,  a  work 
of  reference,  such  as  Clarke's  Constants  of  Nature,  is  an  in- 
ventory which  may  tell  us  exactly  where  to  find  what  we 
need.  The  tiny  bit  of  platinum  has  been  indispensable  to 
the  incandescent  lamp,  and  the  demands  ol  the  electrician, 
as  in  the  ease  of  copper,  have  had  a  decided  effect  on  the 
price  of  the  metal.  Because  the  glass  which  the  platinum 
enters  is  wry  strong  it  may  be  thin,  SO  that  a  very  short 
wire  of  the  costly  metal  suffices.  Recent  experiments  with 
an  alloy  of  nickel  and  steel  show  it  to  have  much  the  same 
cpansion  and  contraction  as  glass  when  exposed  to 


INCANDESCENCE  12 


heat  and  cold  ;  this  alloy,  therefore,  may  prove  to  be  avail- 
able as  a  conductor  for  incandescent  lamps  instead  of 
platinum. 

In  augmenting  the  light  to  be  had  from  a  given  current, 
two  paths  are  open  to  the  inventor.  He  may  either  in- 
tensify the  current,  and  be  rewarded  as  if  he  were  to  work 
the  bellows  on  his  hearth  that  he  may  read  by  the  light  of 
its  flame,  or  he  may  choose  a  substance  which  shines  with 
peculiar  brilliancy  when  brought  to  a  very  high  tempera- 
ture. This  twofold  quest  is  surrounded  with  difficulties. 
In  lamps  of  the  latest  type  the  filament  is  stout  enough  to 
bear  a  current  of  from  200  to  250  volts,  with  a  life  usually 
one-third  longer  than  that  of  lamps  adapted  to  a  current  of 
1 10  volts.  But  there  is  a  limit  to  the  heat  which  even  the 
most  refractory  substances  will  bear,  and  of  this  we  have  an 
illustration  not  infrequently.  Sometimes  an  accident  at 
headquarters  sends  a  current  of  double  voltage  through  the 
filament  of  a  lamp  ;  for  a  few  seconds  the  thread  glows  with 
eightfold  its  former  intensity,  and  we  are  tempted  to  think 
that  here  is  a  way  of  getting  vastly  more  light  out  of  elec- 
tricity than  we  have  ever  had  yet.  But  the  thought  has 
scarcely  time  to  pass  through  the  mind  before  the  filament 
breaks  under  the  strain  of  a  temperature  close  to  its  point 
of  fusion.  Within  the  narrow  bounds  of  experiment  it  has 
been  ascertained  that  a  threefold  current  exerts  a  twenty- 
sevenfold  power  of  illumination — that  the  exaltation  of 
light  is  as  the  cube  of  increase  in  the  current  applied. 
Plainly,  the  electrician  is  here  rigidly  fenced  in  by  the  melt- 
ing-points of  the  materials  he  sets  aglow. 

But  among  these  materials  there  may  be  some  which 
exceed  carbon  in  radiant  quality,  and  it  is  along  this  line 
that  inquiry  is  now  directed.  One  of  the  best  illuminants  is 
the  oxyhydrogen  flame  as  it  plays  upon  a  block  of  lime ;  a 
light  of  yet  greater  brilliancy  bursts  forth  as  magnesium 
burns  to  form  magnesia.      Both  these  facts  may  have  had 


128 


ELFXTRIC    LIGHT 


a  hint  for  Auer  von  Welsbach  when  he  entered  upon  the 
researches  in  which  he  has  won  distinction.  In  his  incan- 
descent mantles  for  Argand  burners  a  gas-flame  is  doubled 
in  light-rays  through  playing  upon  a  film  of  oxides,  chiefly 
those  of  thorium  and  zirconium.  In  recent  experiments  he 
has  found  that  threads  of  osmium,  ruthenium,  and  thoria 
yield  an  excellent  light  when  conveying  an  electric  current. 
These  materials  are  costly,  and  their  preparation  is  difficult. 
Yet,  with  the  cheapening  which  is  likely  to  follow  an  enlarged 
demand,  and  the  knowledge  which  rewards  persistent  and 
concerted  attack,  it  may  be  that  the  success  of  the  incan- 
descent mantle  with  gas  is  to  be  repeated  with  electric 
lighting.      Chemistry  here  has  not  said  its  last  word. 

On  a  related  line  of  ex- 
periment, Mr.  Edison  has 
recently  modified  the  car- 
bon filament  of  his  incan- 
descent lamp  so  as  to  adapt 
it  for  use  on  high-tension 
currents.      This  new   fila- 
ment  is   compounded    of 
carbon  and  of  rare  earths, 
such  as  the  oxide  of  zir- 
conium or  of  thorium. 
Following  a  somewhat  similar  line  of  investigation,  Pro- 
fessor Walther  Nernst  of  Gottingen  has  devised  a  lamp  of 
tested    utility.        Between    two  platinum 
The  Nernst  Lamp,     springs  he  places  a  cylinder  formed  of  any 
substance,  such  as  magnesia,  which  is  re- 
fractory to  heat,  and  at  the  same  time  refulgent  at  a  high 
temperature.      A  cylinder  of  magnesia  at  common  tempera- 
tures is  a  poor  conductor,  hut  when  heated  it  carries  a  cur- 
rent with  ease.      An  auxiliary  current,  or  flame,  warms  the 
magnesia  at   the  outset  of  its  work,  and,  that  done,  a  strong 
current  enters  and  keeps  the  cylinder  vividly  aglow.     The 


Fig.  44. 
Simple  Geissler  tube. 


CONDUCTORS    ABOLISHED  129 

Nernst  lamp  enjoys  all  the  economy  of  the  arc-lamp,  and 
offers  the  further  advantage  that  it  can  be  manufactured  in 
smaller  dimensions  and  serve  smaller  spaces.      How  far  the 

necessity  for  beginning  by 
warming  its  cylinder  may 
work  to  its  disfavour  is  a 
question  which  only  ex- 
perience can  decide  (Fig. 
43).  BB  are  binding- 
posts  through  which  a  cur- 
rent is  sent  to  the  two  me- 
tallic springs  55,  which 
hold  the  light-giving  body  C.  The  flame  of  a  lamp,  D, 
brought  under  C  for  a  few  seconds,  warms  it  to  the  point 
of  conductivity. 

Many  attempts  have  been  directed  to  producing  electric 
light  by  means  other  than  the  arc  of  two  carbon  pencils, 
the  filament  or  the  rod  aglow.      Tesla,  in 
experiments   of    great    interest,    has    re-     Tesia's  Experiments, 
turned  to  the  original  phase  of  illumina- 
tion as  due  to  pulses  of  extreme  intensity.      We  can  follow 
his  successive  steps  if  we  begin  with  a  common  Geissler 
tube,  almost  exhausted  of  air,  its  electrodes,  or  current  car- 
riers,   extended  just  within  , 
the    glass    (Fig.    44).      On 
sending  an  alternating  cur 


Fig.  45. 
Geissler  tube  with  external  electrodes. 


rent       of      high      intensity 

through  the  tube  from  one  ^'/Wj  I  \\\\\\^ 

electrode  to  the  other,  the 

gas   commences   to    gleam, 

and  through  a  spectroscope 

its  characteristic  lines  and  bands  come  clearly  into  view.     In 

a  second  and  similar  tube  the  electrodes  may  remain  outside 

the  glass,  but  in  contact  with  it,  while  the  luminous  effect 

continues  unabated  (Fig.  45).      The  electrodes  may  be  re- 


I  }o 


ELECTRIC    LIGHT 


Fin.  46. 


moved  farther  and  farther  from  the  tube,  and  may  finally 
be  soldered  to  large  sheets  of  metal  forming  walls  as  much 
as  fifteen  feet  apart;  with  pulses  of  redoubled  tension  any- 
where within  these  walls,  the  tubes  or  globes,  exhausted  as 
b<  fore,  may  be  waved  about  while  they  continue  to  shine 
vividly.      No  electrical  experiment  is  more  astonishing  than 

this,  accustomed  as  we  are  to 
supposing  that  for  a  luminous 
effect  a  metallic  tie  is  imperative 
(Fig.  46). 

In  large  exhausted  tubes  Mr. 
D.  Macfarlan  Moore  converts 
night  to  day  with  a  brilliant  and 
continuous  band  of  light   similar 

Glass  sphere  luminous  between     jn  origin.     Franklin  identified  the 
tw  0  metal  plates.  ,         r      ,         T  . 

spark    01    the    Leyden  jar    with 

the  lightning  of  the  sky;  Geissler,  Tesla,  and  Moore  have 
shown  that  the  aurora  borealis  and  the  rays  from  a  rapid 
alternating  machine  are  one  and  the  same.  As  yet  the 
aurora  of  mechanical  birth  is  too  costly  to  take  a  place  in 
the  market  beside  the  arc  and  incandescent  lamps.  In 
demonstrating  that  a  gas,  without  rising  in  temperature, 
may  be  lashed  by  electricity  to  all  the  glow  of  flame,  the 
artificial  aurora  sheds  a  ray  of  explanation  on  the  aurora 
of  nature,  and  points  the  way  to  that  desideratum  of  elec- 
tric art — light  without  the  present  enormous  waste  attend- 
ing its  production. 

To  the  eyes  of  early  observers  light  was  always  associated 
with  heat,  and  the  auroras  of  the  upper  air,  as  well  as  the 
nebulae  of  the  remotest  heavens,  were  deemed  to  be  hot  like 
the  stars,  simply  because  they  shone  with  brightness  in  the 
sky.  Recent  and  critical  examination  discloses  that  both 
auroras  and  nebulas  are  probably  intensely  cold — a  degree 
or  two,  perhaps,  above  absolute  zero.  Within  the  past 
•  ie  attention   has  been   turned  to  living  examples  on 


THE   UNAPPROACHED   FIREFLY      131 

earth  of  light  generated  without  heat  as  a  companion. 
The  glow-worm,  low  as  it  is  in  the  scale  of  life,  accom- 
plishes the  feat.  So  in  more  striking  fashion  does  the  fire- 
fly, especially  in  the  large  species  Pyrophorus  noctilucus, 
which  flourishes  in  Cuba  (Fig. 
47). '  In  music,  as  Lord  Ray- 
leigh  points  out,  we  may  strike 
the  higher  octaves  at  once, 
and  strike  them  only,  but  in 
reaching  the  upper  octaves  of 
the   molecular   music   we  call 

light,  we  must  bear  the  corn- 
Cuban  firefly  (Pyrophorus  noctiluctis). 
pany  of  the  lower  scale  of  heat, 

however  costly,  useless,  and  offensive  it  may  be.  The  elec- 
trical engineer  has  only  to  read  the  secret  of  the  glow-worm 
and  the  firefly,  as  they  shine  in  his  path,  to  find  his  goal  in 
the  full  conversion  of  the  energy  of  his  fuel  into  light. 

Energy  in  the  heat  of  a  steam-boiler  as  applied  to  pro- 
ducing electric  light  rarely  rises  to  an  efficacy  of  as  much 
as  one-hundredth   part ;  and  yet,  for  all 
their    waste,    electric    lamps    mark    the     The  Gifts  of  Electric 
longest  stride   ever  taken   in   the   art  of  Lighting, 

illumination.  The  beams  of  the  arc-light 
abound  in  the  full  variety  of  rays  to  which  the  sun  has  ac- 
customed the  eye,  while  the  proportion  of  light  to  heat  is 
much  greater  than  in  any  other  artificial  illuminant.  In  its 
''  inclosed  "  types,  usually  of  moderate  dimensions,  the  arc- 
lamp  yields  rays  resembling  those  of  daylight  in  their 
diffusion,  while  the  inclosing  globe  abolishes  all  peril  from 
detached  particles  of  flaming  carbon,  or  the  accidental 
touching  of  the  carbon  rods  by  inflammable  materials. 
Other  advantages  are  enjoyed.       An  ordinary  arc-lamp  is 

1  An  elaborate  study  of  the  light  of  this  insect  appears  in  a  paper,  "On  the 
Cheapest  Form  of  Light,"  by  S.  P.  Langley  and  F.  W.  Very,  American  Jour- 
nal of  Science,  Vol.  XL,  August,  1890. 


i  )i  ELECTRIC    LIGHT 

operated  by  a  current  of  45  volts;  an  inclosed  lamp  of  the 
"  Helios"  pattern  employs  a  current  of  80  volts,  so  that  its 
carbons  are  farther  apart,  with  a  broader  path  for  the  emis- 
sion of  light.  The  pencils  occupy  a  small  glass  cylinder 
closed  at  the  base  ;  the  air  in  this  cylinder  becomes  intensely 
hot,  and  is  correspondingly  attenuated,  with  the  effect  that 
its  oxygen  attacks  the  carbons  much  less  than  the  oxygen  of 
the  open  air  attacks  the  pencils  of  a  common  arc-lamp. 
The  regulation  of  a  "  Helios  "  exhibits  a  return  from  com- 
plexity to  simplicity:  two  electromagnets  are  directly  en- 
ergised by  the  lighting  current;  at  its  full  strength  that 
current  by  means  of  a  lever  draws  the  carbons  apart ;  when 
the  current  grows  weak  the  lever  relaxes  its  grasp  and 
permits  the  carbons  to  approach. 

When  manufactured  in  its  boldest  proportions,  the  in- 
tensity of  the  arc-lamp  has  created  for  it  a  new  field. 
Mounted  upon  a  tower  on  land  or  at  sea,  it  is  a  search-light 
of  golden  value  in  both  peace  and  war,  disclosing  in  the 
one  case  a  path  of  safety  to  the  mariner,  in  the  other  mak- 
ing as  clear  as  sunshine  the  best  line  for  attack.  By 
using  it  for  throwing  signals  upon  the  clouds,  according  to 
a  code,  during  the  South  African  campaign  in  1899  mes- 
sages were  read  between  Kimberley  and  Phillipstown,  a 
distance  of  115  miles.  The  Suez  Canal  is  navigable  by 
night  as  easily  as  by  day,  thanks  to  the  arc-lamps  of  its 
steamers.  In  a  very  different  field,  an  electric  search- 
light has  just  been  impressed  into  the  service  of  the  fire 
department  of  New  York,  making  clear  the  best  points  for 
work  by  the  corps. 

The  incandescent  lamp,  In-  comparison  feeble,  is  never- 
theless, in  the  sum  total  ol  its  uses,  more  important  than  the 
arc-light.  Shut  up  inside  its  empty  bulb,  it  neither  con- 
sumes  nor  pollutes  the  air.  As  comparatively  little  heat 
attends  it,  and  because  it  is  strictly  secluded  from  the  at- 
mosphere, it  is  sale  where  any  other  light  would  be  hazard- 


BLESSINGS   MANIFOLD  133 

ous,  as  in  gunpowder-magazines,  in  collieries  liable  to 
fire-damp,  and  in  flour-mills  where  a  fine  explosive  dust 
rises  from  the  machinery.  Its  use  banishes  the  match, 
from  which  so  large  a  number  of  "  accidental  "  fires  arise.1 

It  goes  where  no  other  light  can  go:  under  water  as  an 
aid  to  the  fisherman  and  the  diver;  beneath  a  balloon,  or 
within  it,  as  a  signaller  a  thousand  feet  or  more  above  the 
ground ;  while  the  surgeon  introduces  it  into  the  throat 
or  stomach  of  a  patient  to  explore  the  tract  of  disease. 
Armed  with  an  automatic  appliance  easily  actuated  by  elec- 
tricity, a  light  may  be  left  to  itself  in  full  confidence  that  it 
will  be  maintained,  for  on  the  instant  of  accidental  extinc- 
tion a  neighbouring  lamp  is  set  aglow. 

Now  that  houses,  concert-halls,  and  theatres  are  lighted 
by  electricity,  their  air  is  much  less  impure  than  when  gas 
was  employed,  and  because  less  ventilation  is  necessary 
than  of  old,  there  is  a  lessened  demand  for  heating  in 
winter,  with  a  diminished  play  of  baleful  draughts.  An 
eminent  musical  critic  of  New  York  declares  that  to-day 
we  live  in  the  golden  age  of  song.  This  is  without  doubt 
to  be  credited  in  part  to  the  electrician,  who  provides 
singers,  musicians,  and  conductors  with  much  better  air 
than  they  ever  enjoyed  before  the  era  of  electric  illumina- 
tion. The  same  good  atmosphere  bestows  upon  the 
contents  of  libraries,  picture-galleries,  and  museums  a 
lengthened  lease  of  life.  In  the  mansion  electric  lighting 
confers  upon  decorative  art  a  new  and  delightful  resource ; 
in  the  theatre  it  gives  the  stage-manager  instant  and  easy 
control  of  hundreds  of  lamps  scattered  in  front  of  and  be- 
hind his  drop-curtain ;  it  grants  him  a  simulation  of  dawn, 

1  During  the  year  1898  the  total  number  of  fires  in  Boston  was  1980. 

Caused  by  matches  and  rats 30 

Caused  by  matches  and  children 78 

Caused  by  careless  use  of  matches 107 

215 


134  ELECTRIC    LIGHT 

of   moonlight,  and   of   storm    unknown   before   the   electric 
age. 

Electricity  has  thus  entered  the  domain  of  li^ht  as  a 
multiplier  not  less  potent  than  in  the  field  of  heat.  It  re- 
duces the  waste  attending  the  production  of  light  from 
fuels,  grievous  though  that  waste  continues  to  be.  It 
brings  illumination  to  a  new  intensity,  and  therefore  to  a 
new  field.  It  promotes  cleanliness,  safety,  and  health. 
As  it  can  be  divided  into  small  units  with  the  utmost  ease, 
it  affords  the  engineer  a  new  facility  in  distribution.  The 
first  arc-lamps,  powerful  as  they  were,  needed  an  elaborate 
system  of  lenses  and  reflectors  to  give  their  rays  a  useful 
diffusion.  With  incandescent  bulbs  arrived  a  better 
method.  Their  wire  may  turn  a  corner  every  foot  for 
miles,  and,  none  the  worse,  yield  a  sufficient  beam  at  every 
rod  of  the  journey.  To  borrow  a  phrase  from  the  mathe- 
maticians, electricity  raises  all  the  old  arts  of  lighting  to  a 
new  power,  and  creates,  as  we  shall  presently  note,  a  beam 
with  powers  denied  even  to  the  solar  ray. 


CHAPTER    XI 

ELECTRIC   BATTERIES 

IN  the  fields  of  electric  heat  and  light  we  have  seen  how 
electricity  began  by  doing  an  old  task  in  a  better  way 
than  fire  ever  did   it,  and   then  passed  to  the  performance 
of  work  quite  beyond  the  scope  of  fire, 
however  well   directed.      The  history  of    The  Primary  Battery 
the  voltaic  battery  repeats  all  this.       In    and  the  Eiectropiater. 
its  original  form  this  device  was  offensive 
and  irregular  in  its  action,  short-lived  and  dear.      Its  best 
modern  types  emit  no  odours,  give  an  equable  current,  cost 
but  little  when  at  work  and  nothing  at  all  when  idle.      For 
many  purposes,  where  a  small  current  is  enough,  and  its  use 
infrequent,  as  in  ringing  a  door-bell  or  touching  off  a  fuse, 
the  voltaic  battery  is  not  likely  to  lose  its  place.      But  it  is 
rather  in  its  offspring  than  in  itself  that  this  primary  bat- 
tery has  claims  to  distinction. 

This  was  indicated  early  in  its  history.  It  was  noticed 
by  the  first  experimenters  that  its  processes  of  wasting 
away  could  be  readily  reversed,  that  if  a  current  from  one 
cell  were  led  into  another,  it  was  easy  in  the  second  cell  to 
obtain  a  deposit  of  solid  metal  from  its  solution.  Thus 
electroplating  was  discovered,  and  tasks  long  accomplished 
only  by  fire  were  handed  over  to  electricity.  Before  1840, 
silver  plate  was  made  by  soldering  a  thin  plate  of  silver  to 
a  sheet  of  copper,  which  was  then  rolled  out  and  shaped 

135 


136  ELECTRIC   BATTERIES 

into  cups,  bowls,  and  pitchers.  A  similar  method  of  man- 
ufacture survives  in  the  Crooke  process,  by  which  lead-foil 
is  surfaced  with  tin  as  a  damp-proof  lining  for  packages 
and  an  impervious  covering  for  corks  and  stoppers. 

The  results  achieved  by  the  electroplater  are  much  more 
refined  and  delicate  than  those  possible  to  fire.  Heat 
causes  an  expansion  in  metals  which  seriously  interferes 
with  nicety  of  execution,  which  often  demands  in  a  coating 
of  gold  or  silver  much  more  metal  than  when  the  film  is 
deposited  from  an  electrolytic  solution.  The  contrast  be- 
tween old  methods  and  new  is  very  striking  in  the  manu- 
facture of  "  galvanised  "  iron.  The  original  plan  was  to 
dip  iron  into  molten  zinc.  This  process  is  now  being  re- 
placed by  immersion  in  a  cool,  electrolytic  cell  in  which  the 
zinc  is  deposited  in  a  closely  adherent  film,  smooth  in  sur- 
face and  exactly  uniform  in  thickness;  the  zinc,  united  to 
the  iron  in  the  molten  bath,  has  not  the  same  excellence. 

To  prepare  solutions  which  give  the  electroplater  the 
best  results  with  his  various  metals  has  been  a  prolonged 
and  difficult  undertaking.  To  deposit  a  film  of  silver  suc- 
cessfully the  metal  must  be  of  close  coherent  texture  ;  only 
at  the  end  of  many  and  costly  failures  was  it  ascertained 
that  silver  of  durable  grain  is  to  be  had  only  from  its  solu- 
tion in  cyanide  of  potassium.  The  deposition  of  nickel  was 
for  years  a  baffling  problem  until  Isaac  Adams  of  Boston 
found  that  nickel  salts  were  usually  contaminated  by  nitrate 
of  soda;  when  this  intruder  was  ousted  there  was  little 
further  difficulty,  and  to-day  stoves,  cutlery,  and  hardware 
of  great  variety  are  given  a  tough  and  handsome  coating 
in  the  nickel  bath.  With  modified  solutions  of  copper, 
zinc,  nickel,  and  silver,  adherent  coverings  of  these  metals 
have  been  given  to  wood,  vulcanised  fibre,  and  hard  rub- 
ber. The  wooden  handles  of  tools  and  instruments  ex- 
posed by  turns  to  wetness  and  dryness  may  thus  be  rendered 
durable  with   no  sacrifice  of  lightness.      Ornamental  carv- 


THE  FOUNDRY  OUTDONE     137 

ings  and  mouldings  are  in  like  manner  given  a  strong  and 
beautiful  shield  of  metal.  On  occasion  the  bath  may  be  of 
huge  proportions,  as  in  one  of  the  boldest  tasks  ever  essayed 
by  the  electroplater — in  adding  a  surface  of  aluminium 
to  the  metal  which  afterward  rose  as  the  dome  of  the  City 
Hall  in  Philadelphia.  The  total  area  treated  was  120,000 
square  feet,  and  included  masses  weighing  10,000  pounds. 

The  ship-builder  is  not  negligent  of  the  value  of  electro- 
plating. The  steam-tug  Assistance,  of  the  United  States 
navy,  is  a  vessel  whose  iron  plates  were  electroplated  with 
copper  early  in  1895.  During  four  years  of  constant  ser- 
vice her  plates  remained  free  from  barnacles  or  marine 
growths  of  any  kind.  In  cost  this  process  is  considerably 
less  than  that  of  ordinary  copper  sheathing. 

One  of  the  prime  uses  of  fire  to  the  savage  was  in  the 
casting  of  metals.  It  was  an  immense  saving  of  time  and 
strength  when,  instead  of  having  to  beat 

a  maSS  Of  COpper  intO   the  Shape   Of  a  Club   A  Rival  of  the  Foundry. 

or  a  hammer,  he  found  out  how  to  fuse 
the  metal  in  a  blaze,  pour  it  into  a  mould,  and  let  it  cool. 
All  that  the  savage  ever  accomplished  in  thus  making  fuel 
do  his  work  was  vastly  extended  and  lifted  as  the  arts  of  the 
metal-worker  rose  to  more  and  more  of  skill  and  deftness. 
Early  in  the  development  of  the  voltaic  cell  these  ancient 
arts  of  the  founder  were  obliged  to  face  rivalry  from  an 
unexpected  quarter,  for  the  electrician  soon  passed  from  the 
enrichment  or  protection  of  surfaces  to  the  duplication  of 
an  entire  object.  At  first,  of  course,  small  things  were  the 
means  of  showing  what  the  new  agent  could  do.  For  ex- 
ample, a  medal  would  be  copied  by  taking  a  mould  of  it  in 
wax  or  plaster  of  Paris  and  dusting  this  carefully  with  a 
conducting  film  of  plumbago;  on  immersion  in  a  suitable 
bath,  after  attaching  the  mould  to  the  positive  pole  of  a  bat- 
tery, the  original  was  accurately  reproduced.  Here  for 
the   first  time  was  deliverance  from  some  of  the  evils  at- 


138  ELECTRIC   BATTERIES 

tending  the  use  of  fire  foi  such  a  task.  Because  there  was 
no  expansion  due  to  heat  the  reproduction  was  exact  in  its 
every  line,  there  was  no  burning  with  its  liabilities  of  injury 
and  discoloration,  and  the  operator  did  his  work  without 
inconvenience  from  the  glare  of  flame  or  the  temperature 
necessary  to  fusion. 

It  was  not  long  before  the  electrical  mode  of  duplication 
was  extended  to  pages  of  printers'  type,  for  which  moulds 
of  gutta-percha  are  found  to  be  best.  In  like  manner 
etched  and  engraved  plates  are  faithfully  multiplied.  The 
gain  in  all  this  is  that  the  originals  are  copied  with  the 
utmost  precision,  while  they  are  preserved  in  their  first 
perfection  free  from  the  touch  of  ink  and  the  abrasion  of 
the  press.  Electrotypes  cheaply  made  are  renewed  as  soon 
as  they  show  signs  of  wear,  and  the  modern  printer's  high 
standard  of  execution  thus  owes  not  a  little  to  the  electri- 
cian's aid.  Thanks  to  electrotvpy,  not  only  ordinary  illus- 
trated works,  but  atlases  and  maps,  are  now  issued  in  large 
editions  at  a  traction  of  their  former  cost.  The  engraved 
maps  of  the  Ordnance  Survey  of  Great  Britain  are  never 
directly  used  in  the  press;  at  stated  intervals  in  their  con- 
stant revision  the)-  are  handed  to  the  electroplater  to  be 
copied  and  published  at  low  prices. 

To-day  with  the  cheap  current  from  the  dynamo  the 
electrician  rises  to  bolder  flights  than  these.  No  longer 
does  he  treat  mere  surfaces  for  the  silversmith,  or  thin 
plates  for  the  printer,  but  takes  in  hand  the  clay  model  of 
the  sculptor,  large  and  irregular  in  its  mass,  for  exquisite 
duplication.  In  materials  impervious  to  liquids,  and  highly 
elastic,  he  forms  a  mould  of  a  bust  or  a  group;  when  a 
metallic  deposit  is  secured,  the  mould  is  easily  removed. 
(  >r,  he  may  repeat  one  of  the  steps  of  the  casting  pro 
and  make  his  mould  in  several  parts.  The  statue  of  San 
Fidele,  at  Palazzolo  sull'  Oglio,  Italy,  was  thus  produced  in 
seventeen   sections.      It   stands  23  feet  in  height  as  it  sur- 


AID   TO   THE   SCULPTOR 


*39 


mounts  the  Torre  del  Popolo  ;  as  its  plates  are  but  one- 
fifth  of  an  inch  thick,  its  weight  is  but  I  760  pounds.  An- 
other striking  example  of 
the  same  feat  is  the  Gut- 
enberg monument  at 
Frankfort  -  on  -  the  -  Main, 
whose  three  life-sized 
figures,  created  by  R. 
Schmidt  von  der  Launitz, 
sprang  not  from  foundry 
flasks,  but  from  the  elec- 
tric bath  (Fig.  48).  Let 
the  current  become  still 
cheaper  than  it  is  to-day, 
and  the  founder  may  see 
the  whole  of  his  business 
transferred  to  this  for- 
midable rival,  the  warping 
heats  of  sand-moulds  ban- 
ished, the  scorching  tem- 
peratures of  crucible  and  ladle  a  reminiscence, 
see  flame  outsped,  its  feats  surpassed. 

The  ability  to  effect  chemical  separation  without  heat  lifts 
the  latch  to  a  numerous  array  of  industrial  processes.      It 
brings  to  that  venerable  contrivance,  the 
smelting-furnace,  a  new  and  unforeseen  Smelting  Finds  a  Com- 

.  _        ,         c     petitor  and  the  Miner 

competitor.      In   the   important    held    of  saves  Much, 

dissevering  metals  directly  from  their 
ores  an  auspicious  beginning  is  recorded,  while  about  three- 
fourths  of  all  the  copper  now  mined  is  refined  electrolyti- 
cally,  furthering  the  electric  arts  by  handing  them  con- 
ductors of  new  purity  and  efficiency.  One  of  the  largest 
works  in  the  world,  those  of  the  Boston  and  Montana  Copper 
Company,  at  Great  Falls,  Montana,  employs  in  this  service 
3000  horse-power,  supplied   by  the  Missouri   River.     The 


Fig.  48. 

Gutenberg  statue, 
Frankfort-on-the-Main. 


Again  we 


i4o 


ELECTRIC   BATTERIES 


copper  ore  is  first  mechanically  concentrated,  then  roasted, 
next  smelted  into  matte  and  blown  into  plates ;  these  are 
suspended  in  large  tanks,  filled  with  a  solution  mainly  com- 
posed of  copper  sulphate  and  sulphuric  acid.  A  current 
of  feeble  intensity  and  large  amount  is  passed  through  the 
tanks  in  succession,  and  the  metal  is  deposited,  as  in  electro- 
plating, on  sheets  of  copper  which  thicken  rapidly  and 
prove  to  be  almost  pure.  The  refuse  which  falls  to  the 
bottom  of  the  tanks  yields  in  silver  and  gold  much  more 
than  enough  to  pay  the  cost  of  the  whole  refining  operation. 

A  new  source  of  profit  in  mining  consists  in  being  able 
thus  to  pick  up  with  electric  fingers  what  a  few  years  ago 
were  unconsidered  trifles — chiefly  because  they  were  bey<  >nd 
the  play  of  flame.  To  July  I,  1898,  the  Anaconda  Cop- 
per Mining  Company  of  Montana  had  recovered  as  by- 
products 40,658,103  ounces  of  silver  and  135,244  ounces 
of  gold.  The  gold,  in  a  weak  solution  of  potassium  cyanide, 
may  be  but  from  25  to  1 00  grains  in  a  ton,  and  yet  so  efficient 
a  searcher  is  electricity  that  from  such  a  liquid  more  than 
46,000  ounces  of  gold  were  separated  in  1896  in  the  Trans- 
vaal. No  furnace  method  has  so  extraordinary  an  effi- 
ciency. To-day  this  electrical  process  is  in  much  extended 
use  throughout  the  world,  and  so  are  similar  modes  of  re- 
covering extremely  small  fractions  of  silver  from  ores  of 
lead.  No  wonder,  therefore,  that  ores  so  poor  as  to  be 
long  neglected,  and  slimes  for  years  cast  aside  as  waste  and 
worthless,  now  receive  the  chemist's  careful  study. 

One  of  the  strange  facts  in  this  department  of  his  activ- 
ity is  that  one  metal  may  be  easily  separated  in  the  pres- 
ence of  another;  zinc,  for  example,  is  deposited  almost 
chemically  pure  from  an  ore  which  also  contains  lead. 
This  is  of  a  piece  with  the  singular  fact  that  in  a  plating 
bath  an  alloy,  such  as  brass  or  bronze,  can  be  deposited  as 
an  alloy,  although  with  much  more  difficulty  than  either 
copper  or  tin. 


FLAME   OUTSPED  141 

A  new  horizon   spread   itself   before   the   chemist   when 
Davy,  in    1807,  employed   the   electric   current  to  decom- 
pose potash  and   soda,  releasing  potas- 
sium   and   Sodium    for  the    first  time  from     A  Divider  and  Uniter 

their  compounds,  and  accomplishing  the  for  the  chemist, 
feat  without  fire.  When  heat  is  applied 
to  a  solution  until  the  temperature  reaches  an  extreme 
pitch,  the  usual  effect  is  to  evaporate  the  liquid  without 
chemical  change.  Often,  too,  the  application  of  extreme 
heat  to  a  solution  yields  results  of  an  undesirable  kind. 
In  supplanting  heat  by  electricity  the  chemist  has  a  part- 
ing agent  which  does  his  will  at  ordinary  temperatures,  and 
whose  products  he  can  determine  through  an  ample  range 
of  choice.  Place  a  little  water  in  a  platinum  tube,  heat  the 
tube  intensely,  and  the  water  is  divided  into  hydrogen  and 
oxygen  gases.  These  gases  are  diffused  as  a  single  mix- 
ture ;  they  combine  to  form  water  once  more  the  instant 
that  their  heat  is  permitted  to  fall  below  the  temperature 
of  dissociation.  Observe,  in  contrast,  the  separation  by 
electricity  of  these  same  gases.  Each  of  them  is  now  borne 
to  a  tube  or  other  receiver  of  its  own,  all,  too,  in  the  ab- 
sence of  any  heating  effect.  This  fairly  typical  case  shows 
us  the  new  scope  which  the  electric  current  as  a  divider 
affords  the  chemist.  From  common  salt  dissolved  in  water 
Mr.  E.  A.  Le  Sueur  derives  sodium  and  chlorine.  The 
chlorine  is  divided  into  two  portions;  one  immediately 
forms  caustic  soda,  the  other  enters  a  chamber  of  lime  to 
produce  bleaching-powder.  The  same  products  are  ob- 
tained by  a  variety  of  other  ingenious  processes.  A  large 
group  of  chlorates,  including  potassium  chlorate,  which  is 
both  a  useful  ingredient  of  explosives  and  an  important 
medical  specific,  are  manufactured  by  electrolysis ;  so  are 
chloroform,  iodoform,  and  other  resources  of  the  dis- 
pensatory. 

The  electrician  sets  up  a  partnership  not  only  with  the 


142  ELECTRIC   BATTERIES 

druggist,  but  with  the  sugar-refiner,  contributing  as  his 
share  of  the  capital  a  refining  method  so  excellent  that 
four-fifths  of  the  sugar  previously  left  in  the  waste  liquor  is 
now  saved.  He  next  assists  the  tanner,  having  learned 
that  under  electrical  stimulus  liquids  have  a  new  power  of 
penetrating  the  hides  in  their  pits.  With  the  aid  of  a  cur- 
rent changed  every  minute  in  direction,  as  much  work  is 
done  in  two  hours  as  formerly  required  from  ten  days  to 
three  weeks. 

In  the  early  working  of  the  frictional  electrical  machine 
a  strong  odour  was  remarked,  soon  ascertained  to  be  due  to 
the  atmospheric  production  of  ozone — oxygen  in  an  in- 
tensely active  form.  Ozone  is  now  turned  out  on  factory 
principles  at  the  rate  of  135  grammes  per  hour  for  every 
horse-power  employed.  It  has  widely  diversified  uses:  it 
oxidises  oil  for  the  paint  trade;  it  seasons  the  floor-cloth 
known  as  linoleum;  it  purifies  drinking-water;  it  is  an  in- 
valuable bleacher,  and  in  the  manufacture  of  sugar  its 
bleaching  quality  reinforces  the  purifying  effect  of  an  elec- 
tric current.  In  these  manifold  activities  under  the  hand 
of  the  chemist  he  bids  electricity  do  much  that  is  impos- 
sible to  flame,  however  skilful  its  application.  Take  the 
production  of  ozone,  for  example:  a  very  moderate  degree 
of  heat  speedily  brings  it  to  the  form  of  oxygen  and  so 
destroys  its  peculiar  value. 

Electricity  has  remarkable  powers  of  effecting  chemical 
unions  as  well  as  separations,  and  under  circumstances 
where  fire  must  not  appear.  Cavendish,  late  in  the  eigh- 
teenth century,  performed  a  notable  feat  when  he  united 
hydrogen  and  oxygen  by  an  electric  spark  to  form  water. 
To-day  methane,  ethylene,  acetylene,  and  ethane  are  ea<  h 
combined  with  oxygen  by  the  same  simple  agency.  As 
the  chemist  thus  beats  his  electric  al  sw  ord  into  a  trowel,  he 
builds  structures  prophetic  of  the  day  when  the  slow  elab- 
orations "I  the  farm  and  field  may  be  imitated  by  the  arti- 


METALS   AS    FUELS  143 

ficial  synthesis  of  sugars,  oils,  and  starch.  A  variety  of 
dyes,  oils,  and  acids,  nearly  two  hundred  in  number,  pro- 
duced in  nature  as  the  results  of  vital  activities,  are  now 
built  up  from  inorganic  matter.  In  an  increasing  propor- 
tion of  cases  electricity  is  the  agent  which  either  builds  a 
molecule  from  simpler  substances,  or  disengages  a  com- 
pound from  a  structure  more  complicated  than  itself. 
Van  't  Hoff,  in  a  memorable  address  delivered  in  1898, 
stated  that  we  stand  very  near  the  time  when  the  chemist 
will  be  able  to  produce  albumen  in  the  laboratory.  That 
his  prophecy  is  reasonable  appears  from  the  researches 
of  Schutzenberger,  who  devoted  years  to  the  study  of  this 
subtile  compound,  and  who  found  that  three  out  of  the  four 
molecules  into  which  it  may  be  broken  up  can  be  created 
artificially. 

When,  in  Chapter  VII,  a  word  was  said  about  carbon, 
we  noted  how  remarkable  a  reservoir  of  energy  it  is,  a 
single  pound  of  it  in  burning  giving  forth 
as  much  heat  as  would  be  produced  from  The  storage  Battery, 
a  horse-power  applied  for  five  hours  and 
forty-two  minutes  in  tasks  of  friction  or  percussion.  And 
yet,  as  reservoirs  of  energy,  fuels  of  all  kinds  have  their 
disadvantages:  they  only  yield  their  motive  power  when 
burned ;  to  get  up  steam  in  a  boiler  takes  time  and  so 
makes  difficult  the  application  of  the  steam-engine  for 
many  minor  and  intermittent  demands;  even  a  gas-engine 
asks  a  few  minutes  before  its  wheels  can  go  round  after  a 
period  of  rest  and  coolness.  Metals,  for  all  their  excess  in 
weight  beyond  common  fuels  when  energy  values  are  con- 
sidered, offer  themselves  as  reservoirs  of  motive  power  pref- 
erable in  many  ways  to  heat-engines,  however  well  served 
by  fire-wood,  coal,  or  oil.  The  indication  here  lay  in  re- 
marking that  a  metal  as  it  dissolves  in  a  common  acid  solution 
generates  heat,  while  the  same  metal  dissolving  in  a  voltaic 
cell  gives  forth,  not  heat,  but  electricity,  and  this  instantly 


144  ELECTRIC   BATTERIES 

at  a  touch,  while,  when  the  cell  is  not  at  work,  its  acid 
exerts  no  corrosive  action. 

In  the  broad  field  of  the  electrician,  two  distinct  types  of 
apparatus  have  for  many  years  been  familiar:  first,  a  vol- 
taic battery  in  which  metal  dissolves  and  yields  a  current; 
second,  a  plating  battery  in  which  a  current  deposits  metal 
from  its  solution.  In  the  details  of  their  action  these  two 
kinds  of  apparatus  differ  radically.  For  a  long  time  in- 
ventors tried  to  devise  a  storage  battery  which  by  turns 
would  yield  a  current  as  its  metal  dissolves,  and  anon  take 
in  a  current  to  build  a  mass  of  metal  from  its  solution.  The 
problem  thus  put  seems  easy,  but  it  has  presented  obstacles 
so  stubborn  that  only  recently  have  they  been  overcome. 

The  core  of  the  difficulty  lies  in  the  fact  that  dissolving 
a  metal  in  an  acid  bath  is  not  so  simple  as  it  looks,  and 
that  therefore  to  reverse  the  process  is  an  arduous  task. 
In  the  architecture  of  the  molecule,  as  in  that  of  a  house, 
there  may  be  doors  of  two  different  sorts.  One  of  them 
swings  either  forward  or  backward;  it  may  be  pushed  or 
pulled  open;  it  aets  reversibly.  Doors  of  this  kind  swing 
apart  as  the  chemist  decomposes  water;  they  close  behind 
him  again  as  hydrogen  and  oxygen  fly  together  as  water 
once  more.  Another  type  of  door,  much  more  common, 
is  hung  like  a  valve  so  as  to  move  only  in  one  direction: 
it  admits  easily  enough,  but  permits  no  return.  Push  it 
from  the  wrong  side,  and  it  is  shut  all  the  tighter,  standing 
typical  of  an  irreversible  process  in  chemistry.  To  use  a 
homely  illustration  of  an  irreversible  chemical  change,  let 
us  fry  an  egg  over  a  gas-jet;  no  cold,  however  intense,  can 
unfry  it,  and  no  electric  current,  however  strong,  can  restore 
it  t<»  its  first  estate 

From  a  change  as  intricate  as  that  of  a  rooked  egg  let 
us  pass  to  one  as  simple  as  the  decomposition  o|  water  — 
we  shall  find  it  less  simple  than  it  appears  at  first  view. 
When  we  apply  the  poles  of  a  battery  to  initiate  the  sip- 


WHY    LEAD    IS   BEST  145 

aration,  a  little  sulphuric  acid  must  be  present.  Many 
electricians  of  mark  are  disposed  to  think  that,  from  first  to 
last,  it  is  nothing  but  sulphuric  acid,  re-formed  from  mo- 
ment to  moment,  that  is  affected  by  the  parting.  It  is 
worth  remembering  at  this  point  that  the  action  of  a  vol- 
taic cell  is  much  the  better  for  rubbing  its  zinc  plates  with 
mercury.  Just  why  this  should  be,  nobody  knows.  For 
a  successful  storage  battery,  one  that  works  either  way 
with  ease  and  economy,  no  metal  pure  and  simple  gives 
satisfactory  results.  The  electrician  employs  lead  in  its 
compounds;  these  are  further  compounded  as  they  unite 
with  elements  presented  in  solutions  of  sulphuric  acid. 
Compounds  of  lead  are  preferred  to  those  of  any  other 
metal  because  they  are  insoluble   in  an  electrolytic  bath.1 

1  E.  J.  Wade,  in  an  article  in  the  Electrician,  London,  Vol.  XXXIII,  p.  603, 
says  :  "  Herein  lies  the  superiority  of  a  lead-lead-peroxide  cell  to  all  others.  If 
properly  treated,  it  may  be  regenerated  electrolytically,  and  so  nearly  to  its 
original  chemical  and  physical  condition  that  it  can  be  charged  and  recharged 
in  this  way  hundreds  and  even  thousands  of  times  before  the  total  results  of 
the  slight  changes  that  do  take  place  depreciate  it  sufficiently  to  incapacitate  it  for 
further  use,  while  with  all  other  cells  the  changes  that  occur  with  each  charging 
are  relatively  so  large  that  although  all  possible  means  have  been  tried  to  reduce 
them  to  the  minimum,  they  rapidly  deteriorate,  and  require  constant  attention 
and  repairs.  The  reason  for  the  complete  reversibility  of  the  lead  cell  is 
entirely  due  to  the  chemical  behaviour  of  certain  of  the  compounds  into  which 
the  metal  enters.  Lead  alone,  of  all  the  metals,  forms  a  sulphate  that  is 
practically  insoluble  and  unacted  upon  by  water  and  dilute  sulphuric  acid,  and 
it  also  combines  with  oxygen  to  form  a  peroxide,  having  a  good  electrical  con- 
ductivity, and  equally  unaffected  by  the  liquid.  When,  therefore,  a  lead-lead- 
peroxide  couple  is  discharged  in  dilute  sulphuric  acid,  the  lead  sulphate,  which 
is  the  ultimate  product  formed  at  the  poles,  does  not  dissolve  in  the  solution, 
but  remains  on  the  surface  of  the  plates,  ready  for  reduction  and  reoxidation 
when  the  current  is  reversed.  Any  local  action  that  goes  on  when  the  cell  is 
not  at  work  also  results  in  this  insoluble  sulphate,  which  tends  to  torm  a  pro- 
tective coating  on  the  metal,  and  thus  reduces  losses  from  this  cause  to  a 
minimum.  The  compounds  formed,  when  other  metal  than  lead  is  used  as 
the  negative,  not  necessarily  in  a  sulphuric-acid  electrolyte,  but  in  any  other 
practically  possible  solution,  are  all  soluble,  and  dissolve  in  the  liquid  as  fast 
as  they  are  formed,  and  this  simple  fact  has,  up  to  the  present,  barred  the  way 
to  any  substantial  progress  with  these  classes  of  reversible  cells." 


l4^ 


ELECTRIC   BATTERIES 


As  a  storage  cell  is  charged  and  discharged  it  offers  baffling 
problems  of  chemical  reduction  and  combination.  Experi- 
ment here  has  outdistanced  analysis,  and  even  the  best  ap- 
paratus leaves  much  to  be  desired.  The  formation  of  lead 
sulphate  yields  little  energy  in  comparison  with  the  com- 


M  mm   MMi  mmpj   mum  ■*■  mm  mm 

am  n    a*  MMM    mrnrn  mm  MM   tmm 

•m  mm  mm  mmm  «■  a*  mm  mm 

Ml  MM    mm i  mm    aw  MM  mm  Mm 

;►■        »           •  '.:'.        '».         .  V          i|: 

Ml  MM)    Mi  MM)    KM  MM  MM    MM 

♦ .  .     ♦                     «                      •                       •                     •  *             ;   '«,! 

Ml  Mi    MM  MM    MM  MM  MM    M 


Fig.  40. 
Positive  and  negative  plates,  Electric  Storage  Battery  C  >.,  Philadelphia. 

binations  into  which  zinc,  iron,  or  copper  freely  enter.  The 
active  lead  material  needs  a  grid  or  support  of  inactive 
structure,  which  may  be  several  times  its  own  weight 
And  further,  the  formation  of  sulphate  screens  the  inner 
portion  of  a  plate  from  effective  work.  Thus  the  really 
useful  part  of  an  electrode  may  be  no  more  than  from 
5  to  15  per  cent,  of  its  total  weight.1 

The  batteries  of  the  Electric  Storage  Battery  Company  of 
Philadelphia  have  won  wide  favour;  they  derive  an  advan- 
tage from  a  detail  of  form.  The  lead  tor  the  positive  plate 
is  curled  up  into  small  spirals  resembling  shavings  as  they 
leave    a   carpenter's   plane.      At    the    outset    of    operations 

1  London  Electrician^  Vol.  X.WIII,  p.  605. 


IN   TRANSPORTATION  147 

they  are  fastened  into  sockets  where  they  rest  securely  ;  as 
they  grow  bigger  in  chemical  combination  there  is  ample 
room  for  them  (Fig.  49).  In  earlier  batteries  there  was  a 
good  deal  of  trouble  as  the  lead  left  its  net  or  grid  in  the 
successive  alterations  of  its  bulk.  It  is  claimed  that  the 
positive  plates  in  this  battery  survive  alternate  charging 
and  discharging  for  40,000  hours  before  they  are  destroyed, 
and  that  the  life  of  the  negative  plates  is  thrice  as  long.1 

For  the  empire  of  electricity  an  effective  storage  battery 
means  the  dawn  of  a  new  day.      A  dynamo  sends  it  cur- 
rents   derived    from    wind-    or    water- 
powers,    or    from     engines    temporarily      A  Reservoir  and  an 
laden   below   their    capacity,    and    these  Equaliser, 

currents  effect  chemical  restorations 
somewhat  similar  to  those  of  electroplating.  Then,  at 
need,  the  storage  battery  yields  electricity  much  as  a  vol- 
taic battery  does.  Let  us  make  no  mistake  as  to  what  is 
accumulated  in  a  storage  battery  ;  it  is  not  electricity,  but 
a  metal,  or  a  metallic  compound  which  generates  electricity 
on  request.  When  a  householder  fills  his  coal-bin  he  is 
not  storing  fire,  but  a  fuel  which  will  give  him  fire  when- 
ever he  wishes. 

In  the  propulsion  of  launches  and  yachts,  carriages  and 
wagons,  the  storage  battery  has  a  field  that  grows  wider 
every  day.  A  ton  of  coal  can  be  carried  from  Scranton  to 
New  York,  150  miles,  for  less  than  the  cost  of  haulage  one 
mile  through  the  streets  of  the  city.  Not  only  is  horse- 
power more  expensive  than  that  of  steam  in  a  huge  loco- 
motive, but  a  Mogul  engine,  as  it  takes  1000  tons  of  coal 
to  market,  is  in  charge  of  but  two  men  ;  it  requires  the  same 
number  of  men  to  deliver  a  single  wagon-load  of  coal  to  a 
customer  in  New  York.      Moreover,  as  cities  grow  in  size, 

1  The  Storage  Battery,  by  Augustus  Treadwell,  Jr.,  New  York,  Macmillan 
Company,  1898,  is  a  capital  treatise  describing  storage  batteries  of  various 
types  in  detail. 


i4S  ELECTRIC  BATTERIES 

the  average  dwelling,  store,  or  factory  recedes  farther  and 
farther  from  the  railroad  station,  or  the  steamboat  landing, 
with  a  steadily  increasing  tax  for  haulage. 

Hence  the  clear  promise  of  success  as  the  electrical  en- 
gineer begins  to  displace  the  city  horse  with  the  electromo- 
bile  wagon  and  cab.  In  this  field  his  battery  is. distinctly 
superior  to  oil  or  compressed-air  motors.  It  is  safe,  as  it 
contains  nothing  inflammable  or  liable  to  explode  ;  it  is 
easily  handled  and  controlled;  it  does  not  offend  by  heat, 
vibration,  or  odour.  An  electromobile  cab  in  New  York 
has  usually  44  cells,  each  of  9  plates,  the  whole  weigh- 
ing 900  pounds,  and  equal  to  exerting  the  tractive  force  of 
three  horses  for  four  to  five  hours.  Such  cabs  take  up 
much  less  space  than  their  predecessors  in  a  crowded  thor- 
oughfare, while  the  pavements  are  rescued  from  filth,  dust, 
and  noise.  Freight-wagons  have  a  heavier  battery,  pro- 
portioned to  the  load  to  be  carried  and  the  distance  to  be 
run.  It  is  found  that  wooden  wheels  and  solid  rubber 
tires  form  the  best  equipment  for  both  cabs  and  wagons. 
As  electric  vehicles  are  multiplied  they  are  likely  to  put  a 
new  premium  on  good  roads,  as  the  bicycle  has  done;  in- 
deed, the  outcome  of  the  situation  may  be  to  make  smooth 
and  easy  for  the  horse  the  path  upon  which  his  rivals  have 
so  boldly  entered  —  rivals  much  less  tolerant  than  he  of 
quagmires  and  mud. 

The  storage  battery  has  other  uses  in  transportation. 
While  a  ferry-boat  lies  at  its  dock,  if  its  engine  is  busy 
storing  electric  fuel,  the  power  there  accumulated  helps  to 
propyl  the  boat  on  its  next  trip.  If  half  the  working-day 
is  spent  at  docks,  the  engine  need  be  but  half  as  powerful 
as  when  unassisted  by  the  battery.  On  board  a  railroad 
train  a  dynamo  rotated  by  the  axle  of  a  car  may  yield  a 
current  for  a  hundred  lamps;  before  the  train  comes  to  full 
speed,  and  while  it  pauses  here  and  there,  a  small  storage 
battery   serves  as   the  source  of  illumination.      It  is,  how- 


AS   EQUALISERS   OF   POWER         149 

ever,  in  acting  like  a  gigantic  fly-wheel  that  the  storage 
battery  has  its  chief  importance.  To  begin  with  a  minor 
case :  In  large  office  buildings  and  departmental  stores 
the  elevator  service  requires  a  great  deal  of  power,  with 
sharp  alternations  of  much  and  little  demand.  At  one 
moment  eight  elevators  may  be  in  transit,  the  next  moment 
but  two  are  busy,  and  so  on.  At  every  period,  however 
short,  of  uncommon  activity,  the  storage  battery  comes  in 
to  aid  the  dynamo  current,  which  by  itself  would  be  inad- 
equate. Whenever  the  dynamo  current  is  underworked  its 
surplus  energy  goes  into  the  battery  to  restore  its  lead. 

Now  for  fluctuations  on  a  scale  nothing  short  of  stupen- 
dous :  At  power-stations  in  cities  the  variations  of  demand 
are  both  abrupt  and  wide.  On  traction  lines  there  are 
"  rush  "  hours  at  the  beginning  and  close  of  the  working- 
day,  when  the  traffic  is  doubled  or  trebled;  in  lighting 
plants  there  is  a  sharp  call  for  current  about  sunset.  En- 
gines and  generators  had  formerly  to  be  powerful  enough 
to  meet  the  uttermost  strain  that  might  thus  be  put  upon 
them,  although  but  for  three  or  four  hours  of  the  twenty- 
four.  With  the  storage  battery  to  supplement  the  engines 
these  may  be  much  smaller,  because  worked  uniformly  at 
their  most  economical  pace,  which  is  usually  their  maximum 
capacity  or  a  little  less.  During  hours  of  comparatively- 
scant  business  the  power  is  turned  in  part  into  the  storage 
battery,  whence  it  is  released  at  the  call  of  the  heaviest 
travel  or  lighting — to  "  take  off  the  peak,"  as  the  engineers 
say.  For  such  service  as  this  batteries  of  monster  propor- 
tions, costing  $750,000  or  more,  are  now  yoked  to  the 
transportation  and  lighting  systems  of  New  York,  Chicago, 
and  other  great  cities. 

In  the  case  of  water-powers,  which  run  day  and  night, 
there  is  similar  profit  whether  they  are  used  for  traction 
and  lighting,  or  in  manufacturing.  A  mill  usually  requires 
power  for  but  ten  hours  out  of  the  twenty-four;    for  the 


150  ELECTRIC   BATTERIES 

rest  of  the  time  the  electric  energy  may  be  diverted  to  a 
storage  battery  so  as  to  cut  down  the  outlay  for  plant  by 
nearly  one-half.  As  the  electrical  engineer  looks  about 
him  for  business  during  the  dull  hours  of  the  working-day, 
he  espies  with  satisfaction  the  constantly  increasing  num- 
ber of  batteries  to  be  restored  for  use  in  cabs,  wagons, 
launches,  and  yachts.  He  endeavours  also  to  solve  prob- 
lems in  taxation,  much  as  if  he  were  a  statesman  desirous 
to  stimulate  a  national  industry.  He  lowers  his  tariff  for 
the  hours  of  slack  demand  ;  he  does  the  same  when  electri- 
city is  used  for  heating  purposes;  and  he  gives  a  discount 
proportioned  to  the  amount  of  current  a  customer  buys. 
In  all  this  his  reliance  is  largely  upon  a  huge  storage  plant 
which  may  have  an  efficiency  of  as  much  as  84  per  cent. 
At  first  the  dynamo  threatened  to  oust  the  battery  of  Volta 
from  all  but  petty  uses,  but  lo !  its  cells  are  now  taken  from 
the  shelf,  made  reversible,  and  promoted  to  a  full  partner- 
ship. In  all  this  remarkable  development  fire  and  electri- 
city join  hands  for  work  and  for  economy,  which  neither 
can  accomplish  alone.  In  the  storage  battery  the  steam- 
engine  finds  its  complement;  when  both  are  in  harness  for 
a  common  task  they  do  their  work  with  an  efficiency  un- 
exampled in  engineering  art. 

In  the  world  of  finance  a  significant  union  of  traction, 
lighting,  and  power-transmission  systems  is  afoot.  This 
movement  finds  profit  in  substituting  a  large  scale  of  oper- 
ations for  a  small  one  ;  it  finds  an  opportunity,  also,  to  make 
a  slack  demand  for  one  service  coincide  with  a  lively  de- 
mand tor  another.  The  "  rush  "  hours  of  the  early  morning 
on  transportation  lines  are  a  time  of  scant  electric  lighting, 
so  that  then  the  combination  of  a  trolley  with  a  lighting 
system  is  a  distinct  advantage.  Between  five  and  seven 
o'clock  at  night,  especially  in  winter,  the  case  is  different, 
lor  now  the  requirements  for  both  lighting  and  traffic  are 
at  their  height.     Hen-  enters  the  equalisation  of  pressure 


FIRE   EXCELLED  151 

by  a  gigantic  storage  battery,  proving  itself  the  most  lucra- 
tive feature  of  the  new  installations.  All  this  is  not  with- 
out precedent.  In  the  water-supply  of  a  great  city  a  group 
of  engines  is  kept  busy  day  and  night  pumping  an  unvary- 
ing stream.  Because  the  water  flows  into  one  reservoir 
instead  of  into  several  there  follows  an  economy  of  power, 
and  a  trustworthiness  of  supply,  which  the  electrical  en- 
gineer has  done  no  more  than  copy. 

Thus  in  the  field  of  chemical  solution,  long  so  humble 
and  subordinate,  has  electricity  proved  itself  a  multiplier 
of  human  resources  quite  as  fertile  as  in 
provinces  of  higher  dignity,  of  earlier  The  chief  of  the  corner, 
exploitation.  It  gives  metals  a  new 
plasticity  without  hammer-stroke  or  flame,  and  duplicates 
an  intaglio  or  an  etching  with  a  delicacy  denied  to  either  tool 
or  fire.  It  reproduces  a  statue  as  easily  as  a  button,  while 
it  enables  an  artist  by  a  flameless  method  to  duplicate  his 
fragile  model  of  wax  or  clay  in  enduring  bronze.  Follow- 
ing all  metals  to  their  beds  of  ore,  it  enters  into  rivalry  with 
the  blaze  which  but  yesterday  was  the  one  agent  of  divid- 
ing metal  from  matrix,  or  refining  crude  masses  of  copper 
and  silver  to  purity.  Although  for  its  storehouses  of 
energy  it  uses  metals  costly  as  compared  with  coal,  yet  so 
economically  are  these  employed  that  the  storage  battery 
is  not  only  a  convenient  magazine  of  power  for  vehicles, — 
where  heat  is  inadmissible  or  objectionable, — but  plays  an 
important  part  in  equalising  the  vast  fluctuations  incident  to 
lighting  a  metropolis  and  transporting  its  multitudes. 
There  was  somewhat  of  truth  in  the  old  supposition  that 
electricity  is  a  fluid ;  whatever  its  real  nature  may  prove  to 
be,  this  much  is  certain  :  a  current  flows  into  a  reservoir  and 
out  again  with  a  fluidity  little  short  of  perfection. 

The  storage  battery,  for  all  the  worth  it  has  in  itself, 
may  develop  still  more  as  it  points  to  the  construction  of 
molecules  more  intricate  than  its  own.      All  that  the  chem- 


152  ELECTRIC   BATTERIES 

ist  has  ever  done  in  breaking  up  or  building  compounds  in 
liquid  form  is  extended  and  heightened  as  his  solutions  feel 
the  throb  of  electricity.  We  learn  how  an  old  castle  or 
bridge  was  put  together  when  we  see  it  demolished  under 
the  strokes  of  pick  and  crowbar.  The  dismantler  saves 
himself  needless  toil  when  he  follows  the  lines  of  the  archi- 
tect as  closely  as  he  can.  More  than  one  leader  in  chemistry 
applies  all  this  to  the  enigmas  .of  composition,  and  regards 
it  as  only  decomposition  in  reverse.  Let  these  men  but 
follow  up  the  clues  already  in  their  hands,  let  them  unrid- 
dle the  labyrinth  of  chemical  bonds  and  ties,  and  there 
may  succeed  the  creation  at  will  of  new  artificial  com- 
pounds of  the  first  importance.  The  impulse  to  art  given 
by  Volta  from  his  little  town  of  Como  may  not  fully  spend 
itself  till  this  be  done.  When  heat  makes  its  appearance 
as  either  a  uniter  or  a  separator  it  often  works  disturbances 
greatly  to  the  prejudice  of  its  success;  when  electricity  is 
the  agent  this  may  not  be  the  case.  And  thus  there  opens 
to  the  chemist  another  breadth  of  victories  where  electricity 
may  either  do  better  what  heat  does  now,  or  carry  the  flag 
into  territory  where  fire  may  not  enter  at  all. 


CHAPTER   XII 

ELECTRICITY    IN    THE    SERVICE    OF    THE   MECHANIC    AND 

ENGINEER 

TO  the  mechanic  and  engineer  the  principal  use  of  fire 
is  in  the  production  of  motive  power  through  a  steam- 
or  a  gas-engine.  In  a  considerable  and  increasing  measure 
he  derives  such   motive  power  directly 

from    Watercourses    hitherto    little    drawn      Electricity  Preferable 
.,  .  i  a         i   •  •  to  Other  Modes  of 

upon  or  totally  neglected.      At  this  point,  Motion, 

therefore,  we  enter  a  field  where  electri- 
city is  not  in  contrast  with  fire,  but  creates  economies  and 
produces  effects  quite  distinct  from  those  possible  to.  fire  — 
immensely  extending  every  mechanical  resource  and  facility 
of  pre-electric  times.  As  we  proceed  we  shall  plainly  see 
why  it  is  that  the  engineer  and  the  mechanic  prefer  electri- 
city to  any  other  form  of  energy,  and  in  a  constantly  increas- 
ing number  and  variety  of  cases  begin  work  by  converting 
all  their  motive  power  into  electric  currents. 

It   was  Volta,  as  a  chemist,  who,  devising  his  cell,  first 
emancipated  the  electric  current  for  new  and  unnumbered 
uses.     His  successor  to-day  is  the  en- 
gineer, who  wins  his  spurs  by  bringing    AsaMeansofTranS. 
his  generator  to  practical  perfection,  by        muting  Motion, 
improving  his  steam-  and  gas-engines  to 
double  their  efficiency  of  thirty  years  ago,  or  by  designing 
water-wheels  of  the  utmost  economy.      If  to  the  engineer 
and  mechanic  the   electric  art  owes   much,  magnificently 

*53 


1^4  ELECTRIC    MACHINERY 

has  the  debt  been  repaid.  Of  this  an  illustration  displays 
itself  in  every  street.  An  old-fashioned  bell-pull  has  a 
wire  which  moves  as  a  whole  ;  an  electric  bell  has  a  wire 
which  as  a  whole  remains  at  rest  while  it  transmits  a  cur- 
rent from  its  push-button ;  thus  does  electricity  convey 
motion  without  movement  of  its  conductor  as  a  mass. 
Availing  himself  of  this  golden  property,  the  machinist  re- 
moves from  his  shop  a  labyrinth  of  wheels  and  belts,  and 
puts  in  their  place  a  few  wires  at  rest,  each  in  charge  of 
the  motor  actuating  a  machine.  Manifold  gains  result. 
The  power  needed  to  drive  these  wheels  and  belts  is  saved, 
and  when  but  one  or  two  machines  of  a  large  number  are 
to  be  set  in  motion,  the  economy  rises  to  a  high  figure, 
while  the  workshop  becomes  lighter,  cleaner,  safer,  more 
wholesome  in  every  way.  Since  electricity  is  of  all  phases 
of  energy  the  easiest  to  preserve  from  losses  resembling 
leakage  or  friction,  the  current  can  not  only  be  distributed 
throughout  the  largest  workshop  with  convenience  and 
economy,  but  it  can  be  sent  to  the  shop  from  an  engine  or  a 
water-wheel  many  miles  away,  as  in  connecting  motors  at 
Buffalo  to  dynamos  at  Niagara,  twenty-four  miles  distant. 

With  the  conveyance  of  electricity  for  distances  vastly 
exceeding  twenty-four  miles  we  have  long  been  familiar  in 
the  telegraph.  The  long-distance  transmission  of  mere 
signals  has  been  followed  by  that  of  gigantic  powers  as  a  re- 
sult of  advances  along  several  diverse  lines  of  invention  :  first 
and  chiefly,  through  perfecting  the  dynamo  which  converts 
mechanical  motion  into  cheap  electricity,  and  the  introduc- 
tion of  the  motor,  which,  little  else  than  the  dynamo  re- 
versed, economically  recovers  motion  from  electricity ; 
second,  by  taking  advantage  of  the  fact  that  the  higher 
the  voltage,  or  pressure,  of  a  current,  the  less  wire  does  it 
ask  for  its  transmission.  In  this  particular  a  stream  "1" 
electricity  resembles  a  pencil  of  light.  If  parallel  luminous 
rays   are    intensified   by   lenses,   tluir   path    is   narrowed   as 


TRANSMISSION   AFAR  155 

they  move  through  space.  A  current  of  1000  volts  re- 
quires but  one-hundredth  as  much  copper  to  carry  it  as  a 
current  of  100  volts.  The  copper  required  for  a  given 
distance  in  transmission  varies  inversely  as  the  square  of 
the  electrical  pressure. 

Of  course  the  higher  the  voltage  the  greater  are  the 
possibilities  of  mischief,  and  the  more  costly  the  coverings 
demanded  for  insulation  ;  yet,  allowing  for  every  abatement 
on  this  score,  electricity  has  marked  advantages  over  any 
other  mode  of  conveying  power  afar.  Until  within  recent 
years  such  conveyance  was  commonly  effected,  as  in  some 
of  the  traction  lines  of  cities,  by  a  swiftly  moving  cable  of 
steel.  Surely,  it  was  supposed,  nothing  feasible  could  be 
more  efficient.  But  mark  the  superiority  of  electrical 
transmission.  The  current  from  Niagara  has  a  pressure  of 
1 1 ,000  volts.  Were  equal  energy  sent  forward  as  mechan- 
ical motion  it  would  rend  apart  steel  cables  eight  times  as 
large  as  the  copper  conductors  employed.  And  this  with- 
out considering  the  vast  difference  between  the  moderate 
resistance  offered  by  the  copper,  motionless  as  a  mass,  and 
the  considerable  resistance  of  steel  cables  advancing  and 
bending  round  their  pulleys  at  the  rate  of  ten  miles  an 
hour,  let  us  say. 

During  the  summer  of  1891  a  memorable  experiment  was 
carried  out  in  Germany  between  Lauffen  and  Frankfort,  1 12 
miles  apart.  A  turbine  of  180  horse-power  was  used  to 
generate  a  current  of  25,000  volts,  which  was  transmitted 
with  a  loss  of  but  one-fourth.  Although  no  equal  distance 
has  yet  been  covered  by  a  commercial  line,  a  higher  volt- 
age is  maintained  on  the  wire  which  connects  Telluride, 
Colorado,  with  the  Gold  King  Mine,  two  and  a  quarter 
miles  away.  By  employing  glass  insulators  5  inches  high 
and  5i  inches  broad,  a  current  is  conveyed  at  40,000 
volts.  Once,  at  a  time  of  bad  weather,  the  pressure  was 
raised  to  50,000  volts;  through  a  fall  of  damp  snow  or  rain 


156  ELECTRIC    MACHINERY 

the  wires  became  plainly  visible  at  night,  and  the  character- 
istic hissing  of  high-tension  currents  could  be  heard  sev- 
eral hundred  feet  away. 

How  far  electric  energy  may  be  borne  with  profit  is  a 
question  of  local  circumstances.  Where  fuel  is  scarce  and 
dear,  where  roads  are  steep  and  all  but  impassable,  the  line 
may  be  lengthened,  especially  when  a  waterfall  may  be  laid 
under  tribute  with  but  little  outlay.  In  mining  it  was  usual 
until  recently  to  transport  the  ore  as  raised  from  the  shaft 
to  the  crushing-mill,  which  might  be  miles  away.  With 
electricity  the  transmission  of  power  takes  the  place  of  the 
freightage  of  ore;  the  crushing-mill  is  brought  to  the  mine 
and  the  cost  of  handling  and  haulage  is  reduced  to  the 
minimum.  In  the  vast  region  of  the  Southwest,  of  which 
Arizona  stands  the  centre,  huge  central  stations  are  be- 
ing erected  to  supply  light  and  power  in  districts  where 
wood  and  coal  are  scarce  or  absent,  and  where  all  that  fertile 
soil  needs  is  the  irrigation  that  no  other  agent  but  electri- 
city can  provide.  As  one  improvement  in  electrical  prac- 
tice succeeds  another,  as  the  scale  of  operations  grows 
bolder,  and  the  rate  of  interest  on  sound  investments  tends 
to  fall,  the  distances  over  which  currents  are  borne  ap- 
proaches that  of  the  LaufTen-Frankfort  experiment.  At 
Los  Angeles,  California,  a  current  is  received  from  the 
Santa  Ana  River,  above  Redlands,  eighty-one  miles  distant, 
at  a  pressure  of  33,000  volts. 

In  long-distance  transmission  it  is  most  desirable  that  a 

current  should  have  the  highest  practicable  voltage,  but  for 

safety's  sake,  and  to  be  available  in  or- 

The  Transformer.  dinary  lamps  and  motors,  it  is  necessary 
that  the  voltage  should  be  reduced  —  at 
times  to  as  little  as  the  hundredth  part.  The  appliance 
which  effects  this  "  stepping  down"  is  the  transformer.  Its 
work  is  much  the  same  as  that  of  the  wheels  which  famil- 
iarly reduce  the  motion  of   the  minute-hand  of  a  clock  to 


INTENSITY    VARIED  157 

the  slow  rotation  of  the  hour-hand ;  but  instead  of  the  rigid 
push  of  a  small  wheel  against  a  large  one,  the  ethereal  in- 
fluence called  induction  is  impressed  into  service.  Induc- 
tion in  its  most  familiar  phase  is  illustrated  when  a  magnet 
and  a  bit  of  soft  iron  approach  each  other.  As  the  soft 
iron  comes  into  the  field  of  the  magnet,  it  becomes  itself  a 
magnet,  and  at  the  distance  of  y^o  of  an  inch  its  attractive 
power  is  almost  as  great  as  when  the  steel  and  it  are  joined 
together.  In  the  same  way,  as  we  have  already  seen,  if 
'we  have  two  parallel  wires  near  each  other,  and  send  a 
current  through  one  of  them,  a  current  for  an  instant  will 
be  induced  in  the  other  (Fig.  34).  And  for  all  that  we  are 
now  observing  the  action  of  ether  instead  of  that  of  palpable 
and  visible  masses,  the  phenomena  of  induction  have  a 
striking  similarity  to  those  of  wheels  in  contact. 

If  we  wish  to  vary  the  speed  of  a  motion  as  it  is  received 
by  one  wheel  from  another,  we  apply  the  circumference 
of  one  wheel  to  the  axle  of  another,  as  in  a  clock  or  a 
watch.  When  the  medium  is  electrical 
instead  of  mechanical  (Fig.  50),  a  cur- 
rent sent  through  a  thick  wire  induces 
in  a  coil  of  thin  wire  a  current  as  much 
more  intense  than   itself  as  there  are 

more  turns  of  wire  in  A  than  in  B.    Con-  FlG'  5°* 

,  /i    •    j  •        d  1      l.   •  Ruhmkorff  coil, 

tranwise,    A    induces  in  B  an  electric 

throb  less  energetic  than  that  borne  by  itself  in  the  same 

proportion  reversed.      The  first  of  these  two  actions  has  long 

been  displayed  in  this  Ruhmkorff  coil,  an  instrument  built  up 

of  two  closely  wound  coils,  one  of  fine  wire,  the  other  of  wire 

comparatively  coarse,  the  second  coil  surrounding  the  first. 

When  a  frequently  interrupted  current  is  sent  through  the 

thick  wire  it  excites  in  the  outer  coil  pulses  so  extreme  in 

tension  as  to  create  sparks  eight  inches  or  more  in  length. 

Copying  this  design,  a  transformer  may  be  built  to  "  step 

up,"  that  is,  to  take  in  a  current  at  low  pressure  and  convert 


l58  ELECTRIC   MACHINERY 

it  to  an  intensity  which  may  be  a  hundred  times  as  great. 
In  "stepping  down"  the  action  is  reversed:  the  received 
current  enters  the  coil  of  thin  wire,  and  in  its  neighbour 
excites  pulses  of  much  reduced  tension.  In  its  largest  and 
best  designs  this  device  has  an  efficiency  of  90  per  cent, 
and  more.  Its  wastes  appear  in  the  form  of  heat,  and  at 
Niagara  are  turned  to  account  in  winter  for  the  purpose 
of  warming  the  house  in  which  the  huge  transformers  are 
placed. 

In  a  workshop  a  current  is  superior  to  every  other  prime 
mover.  A  thousand  feet  of  belting  one  inch  wide  must 
pass  round  a  pulley  in  a  minute  to  trans- 
Motor  and  Machine  mit  a  single  horse-power.  An  electric 
united.  motor  without  belt  or  gearing  becomes 

one  with  the  wheel  of  a  sewing-machine, 
a  burnisher,  or  a  pump,  and  there,  as  elsewhere,  expense 
ceases  the  moment  the  current  is  switched  off  (Fig.  51). 
The  adjustment  and  control  of  a  lathe  is  particularly  simpli- 
fied by  this  new  mode  of  actuation.  A  flexible  lamp-cord 
can  bring  in  its  power,  and  the  heavy  machine,  like  many 
another,  is  started,  stopped,  reversed,  or  varied  in  speed 
by  a  touch  upon  a  regulating  handle.  The  versatility  of 
the  electric  motor  is  as  well  attested  in  a  coal-mine  as  in  a 
workshop.  First  of  all,  a  machine  undercuts  a  bituminous 
seam  with  twenty  times  the  effect  of  a  pick  and  shovel; 
the  coal  is  thrown  into  a  wagon  and  a  second  motor  hauls 
it  away  ;  from  the  bottom  of  the  shaft  another  motor  lifts 
the  load  to  daylight,  while  a  fourth  is  busy  maintaining  a 
current  of  fresh  air. 

In  an  iron-mine,  wherever  the  rock  is  hard,  the  best  drill 
is  still  driven  by  compressed  air,  which  is  an  aid  to  ventila- 
tion and  coolness,  but  for  every  other  service  electricity  is 
in  commission.  All  the  way  from  the  ore-lied  to  its  issue 
as  pig-iron,  or  steel  billets  or  rails,  the  metal  at  almost 
every    turn    is    manipulated    by    electricity.      Where    vast 


MUSCLES  SUPPLANTED  159 

power  is  in  constant  demand  for  rolling  rails  and  other 
heavy  work,  a  monster  steam-engine  of  the  best  type  is 
in  harness.  To-day  a  twin  engine  driving  a  giant  dynamo 
performs  every  other  duty,  displacing  the  many  small  en- 
gines which  were  formerly  in  charge  of  cranes,  elevators, 
tilting-ladles,  and  the  like,  each  of  which  is  now  driven  by 
an  electric  motor,  with  remarkable  economy.  At  the 
works  of  the  Carnegie  Steel  Company  at  Homestead, 
Pennsylvania,  the  ores,  fuel,  and  fluxes,  as  received  from 
the  mines,  are  unloaded,  transported  to  the  furnaces,  hoisted, 
and  discharged  by  a  round  of  electric  motors ;  while  a  suc- 
cession of  ladles,  trucks,  cranes,  shapers,  and  saws,  all  actu- 
ated by  electricity,  complete  the  manufacture  of  the  steel 
into  beams.  These  are  electrically  laden  upon  railroad  cars 
within  twelve  hours  after  the  raw  material  is  rolled  into  the 
yard.  From  first  to  last  there  is  no  direct  touch  by  a  human 
hand ;  the  staff  of  the  company  confine  their  attention  to 
giving  effect  to  fingers  of  more  than  human  grasp,  strength, 
and  endurance. 

In  the  production  of  American  pig-iron  the  cost  of  labour 
per  ton  fell  about  one-half  in  the  ten  years  ending  with 
1897.  A  considerable  part  of  that  saving  was  due  to  the 
new  electrical  muscles  which  carry  the  burdens  of  an  iron- 
mill  almost  as  if  weight  were  for  the  nonce  abolished. 

In  ship-building  not  less  than  in  metallurgy  the  electric 
motor  is  displacing  the  steam-engine.  At  Newport  News, 
Virginia,  the  largest  revolving  derrick  in  the  world  is  busy 
in  a  shipyard;  it  handles  150  tons  for  a  diameter  of  147 
feet,  and  70  tons  for  a  diameter  of  207  feet.  Steamships 
and  war- vessels  offer  a  field  in  which  the  electric  motor  can 
abolish  much  waste,  discomfort,  and  liability  to  damage. 
A  large  modern  steamship  contains,  besides  her  main  en- 
gines, 40  to  50  auxiliary  engines,  wasteful  in  their  use  of 
steam,  and  served  by  miles  of  piping,  and  hundreds  of 
valves  whose  heat  and  leakages  cause  extreme  discomfort 


i6o  ELECTRIC   MACHINERY 

and  do  much  harm.  These  minor  engines  are  attached  to 
the  anchor,  the  steering-gear,  the  boat-cranes,  the  deck- 
winches,  the  ice-machines,  the  ventilating-fans,  ash-hoists, 
and  the  pumps;  they  work  the  dynamos  which  yield  elec- 
tric light.  The  Darmstadt  and  the  Prinz  Heinrich  of  the 
North  German  Lloyd  Steamship  Company  are  now 
equipped  with  electrically  operated  deck-winches  instead 
of  the  familiar  noisy  donkey-engines.  The  later  steamer 
Bremen,  of  the  same  line,  is  fitted  with  sixteen  electric  deck- 
cranes  for  handling  cargo;  they  are  noiseless  in  operation, 
and  so  simple  that  any  stevedore  can  manage  them  with 
ease.  Some  of  the  new  American  battle-ships  now  build- 
ing will  have  their  turrets  turned  and  their  large  guns 
loaded,  served  with  ammunition,  and  trained  by  electricity.1 
What  the  marine  engineer  is  beginning  to  do  has  already 
been  done  in  some  of  the  largest  mining  and  metal-work- 
ing establishments  in  the  world.      Elec- 

Great  Engines  Drive     tricity     haS     mad°     jt     Profitable     tO     Unify 

out  Small.  motive   power  at   a  monster   generating 

plant,  since  it  provides  a  simple  and  in- 
stant means  of  distributing  that  power,  not  through  the 
contracted  dimensions  of  a  ship,  but  over  acres  or  even 
square  miles,  Power  is  much  more  cheaply  produced  in 
one  big  engine  than  in  several  small  ones ;  motors  do  not 
need  the  constant  attention  demanded  by  steam-engines 
— the  packing  of  piston-rods  and  valve-stems,  the  unremit- 
ting and  costly  lubrication.  An  engineer  in  front  of  a 
switchboard  has  ten  times  the  directive  control  that  he 
had  before  electricity  gave  his  fingers  a  reach  of  miles,  and 
conferred  upon  him  the  same  mastery  as  the  sweep  of 
immediate  vision. 

All  this  is  repeated  and  extended  in  the  field  of  ordinary 
manufactures.     A    single  huge  engine  has  its  power  con- 

1  "  Electricity  in    Marine   Work,"  S.    Dana  Greene,    Cos  -zinc, 

July,    i 


LARGE   ENGINES    VERSUS   SMALI        161 

verted  into  electricity  by  a  dynamo,  and  the  current  car- 
ried throughout  vast  premises  not  only  actuates  the 
machinery,  but  supplies  light,  and  such  heat  as  may  be 
needed,  in  making  hats,  for  example.  A  like  economy 
binds  one  small  factory  to  another,  and  abolishes  their  local 
motive  powers.  Small  steam-engines  are  very  wasteful  of 
fuel,  and  often  require  in  proportion  to  power  five  times  as 
much  coal  as  the  giants  of  the  central  stations.  With  these 
giants,  therefore,  is  the  victory.  Note  a  report  of  their 
battle  as  it  comes  from  a  steam-boiler  inspector  of  Phila- 
delphia. He  says  that  at  the  end  of  1898  625  boilers  out 
of  a  total  of  3575  had  been  displaced  by  electric  motors  in 
that  city.  Wherever  power  is  needed  intermittently,  or  in 
small  units,  the  electric  motor  has  the  field.  An  engine 
must  have  steam  up  all  day,  whether  it  is  busy  or  idle  ;  a 
motor  goes  off  the  pay-list  the  moment  it  stops  work. 

The  Edison  Electric  Illuminating  Company  of  New  York 
had  in  November,  1899,  as  part  of  its  output,  about  30,000 
horse-power  in  electric  motors ;  many  of  these  displaced 
steam-  or  gas-engines. 

In  many  cases  a  large  electrical  installation  originally  es- 
tablished mainly  to   furnish  light,  has   found  added  profit 
in    providing   motive   power   during  the 
hours  when   little   or  no  light   is   in  de-     A  Liehting  Service 

Cheapens  Motive 

mand.      At     Montreal     the      Dominion  Power. 

Cotton  Mills  buy  from  the  Royal  Elec- 
tric Company  3000  horse-power  for  the  actuation  of  ma- 
chinery, with  the  right  to  use  the  current  until  7  P.  M.  in 
summer,  and  until  4  P.  M.  in  winter.  The  mills  are  thus 
able  to  obtain  power  cheaper  than  from  steam,  while 
the  electrical  works  can  use  their  machinery,  lines,  and 
other  equipment  by  day  as  well  as  by  night. 

The  locomotive  divides  with  the  stationary  engine  the 
honours  of  fire  as  a  source  of  motive  power.  So  also  with 
electricity :    all  its  triumphs  in  the  empire  of  manufacture 


\(n  ELECTRIC   MACHINERY 

are  repeated  in  the  realm  of  transportation.      The  first  elec- 
trical   railroad,    500    metres   in   length,    was    built   for   the 

Berlin  Exhibition  of  1879  by  Siemens  & 

Electric  Halske.     Several  otherexperimental  lines 

Transportation.        followed,  and  in  February,  1888,  that  of 

the  Union  Passenger  Railway  Company 
of  Richmond,  Virginia,  proved  itself  the  first  important  en- 
terprise of  the  kind  in  America.1  In  its  present  form  the  con- 
struction of  a  street-car  motor  is  a  marvel  of  compactness 
and  efficiency  ;  its  revolving  armature  (Fig.  52)  has  a  core  of 
laminated  iron  to  avoid  the  waste  of  current  suffered  in  the 
rings  originally  devised  by  Pacinotti  and  Gramme  (Fig.  36). 2 
Although  the  competition  of  electricity  with  the  horse  in 
this  wide  field  is  of  so  recent  date,  it  is  already  near  to 
complete  victory— in  America,  at  least.  Only  on  short 
lines,  and  in  a  few  small  towns  and  villages,  does  the  car- 
horse  retain  the  foothold  that  once  seemed  so  secure.  In 
1898,  New  York,  following  the  lead  of  Budapest  and 
Washington,  adopted  on  a  large  scale  the  open-conduit 
system,  which,  in  the  circumstances  of  a  huge  traffic  com- 
pressed within  narrow  limits,  is  much  safer  and  better  than 
an  overhead-trolley  line.  At  Chicago,  the  line  to  Engle- 
wood  uses  storage  batteries  for  propulsion. 

Substantial  reasons  why  electric  traction  of  various  types 
has  made  its  way  so  fast  are  not  far  to  seek.  It  is  quicker 
than  equine  locomotion  ;  the  space  occupied  by  horses  is  set 
free;  their  filth  is  banished;  the  injury  to  pavements  from 
their  iron-shod  hoots  is  done  away  with.  It  is  the  cheapest 
of  all  services,  equine  or  other.  A  surface  line  in  a  popu- 
lous city  is  hot  supplemented,  as  in  Boston,  by  a  subway, 

1  A  brief  historical  sketch  appears  as  Chapter  XII  in  The  Electric  Railway 
m  Theory  <nui  Practice,  by  Oscar  T.  Crosby  and  Louis  Bell.  New  York, 
W.  J.  Johnston  <  'ompany. 

\   detailed  explanation   of  the  motor  of  a  street-car,  fully  illustral 
given  in  Chapter  l\    ol  t  ectric  Street  Railways,  by  Edwin  J.  Houston  and 
A    I..  Kennelly,     New  York,  \\ .  J.  Johnston  Company. 


W^ari^ 


Fig.  si. 

Worthington  triplex  pump,  geared  to  60  horse-power,  2080  volt  induction 

motor.     General  Electric  Co.,  Schenectady,  N.  Y. 


Fig.  52. 

Armature  for  5  horse-power  direct-current  motor. 

General  Electric  Co.,  Schenectady,  N.  Y. 


TRANSPORTATION  163 

or  a  tunnel,  where  there  is  no  interruption  by  other  traffic, 
and  a  speed  is  attainable  quite  out  of  the  question  above 
ground.  Here,  too,  electricity  is  the  best  motive  power. 
In  London,  the  City  and  South  London  line,  which  runs 
beneath  the  Thames  from  Waterloo  Station,  has  a  sug- 
gestive advantage  in  its  contour.  As  a  train  begins  its 
journey  the  dip  of  the  road  gives  it  precisely  the  accel- 
eration required;  as  the  terminus  is  approached  the  train 
receives  an  equally  desirable  check  as  it  climbs  uphill. 
This  contour  may  be  usefully  reproduced  in  the  succes- 
sive lengths  of  an  underground  road  as  it  unites  station  to 
station,  a  benefit  denied  to  an  elevated  line,  which,  perforce, 
must  be  level  throughout.  The  new  Central  London 
underground  route  which  connects  Liverpool  Street  and 
Shepherd's  Bush,  six  miles  apart,  is  operated  by  electricity ; 
its  line  is  contoured  as  a  series  of  gentle  curves.  Travellers 
who  remember  the  soot  and  fumes  of  the  original  under- 
ground tunnel  of  London  will  rejoice  that  electrical  -pro- 
pulsion has  now  been  adopted  for  its  lines. 

Electric  traction  is  a  boon  in  the  thronged  streets  of  a 
metropolis ;  it  works  yet  greater  benefit  when  it  traverses 
a  city's  gates  and  passes  out  into  the  suburbs.  Having  a 
pace  double  that  of  horses,  it  quadruples  the  area  available 
for  homes.  In  the  older  American  cities  the  more  central, 
narrow  streets  of  residences  are  fast  emptying  themselves 
into  districts  where  cheap  land,  modern  architecture,  and 
fresh  air  unite  their  persuasions.  Between  Albany  and 
Troy,  Minneapolis  and  St.  Paul,  Buffalo  and  Niagara  Falls, 
the  electric  roads  compete  vigorously  with  the  steam  lines. 
Their  cars  run  more  frequently,  they  may  be  boarded  any- 
where through  miles  of  streets,  and  they  leave  a  passenger 
much  nearer  his  destination  than  if  he  were  landed  at  a 
railroad  terminus.  The  consequence  is  that  from  each  of 
these  cities  there  stretches  to  its  twin,  avenue  after  avenue 
of  dwellings  surrounded  by  much  of  the  comfort  and  whole- 


164  ELECTRIC   MACHINERY 

someness  of  country  life.  Cleveland,  Ohio,  as  the  centre 
of  a  populous  vicinage,  and  of  rare  commercial  enterprise, 
can  boast  of  the  most  remarkable  network  of  electrie  lines 
in  the  world,  amounting,  in  October,  1899,  to  no  less  than 
434  miles,  with  Pittsburg,  150  miles  off,  as  an  objective 
point  in  the  near  future. 

That  the  electric  dynamo  may  act  as  a  motor,  and  vice 
versa,  has  been  noticed  in  Chapter  VIII.  On  the*Jungfrau 
Railway  in  Switzerland  this  is  ingeniously  turned  to  account. 
When  the  cars  run  downhill  their  wheels  are  made  to  gen- 
erate a  current,  the  motors  serving  as  dynamos;  this  cur- 
rent takes  its  way  into  the  line-wire  for  storage  at  head- 
quarters. 

One  of  the  creations  of  the  suburban  trolley  line  is  the 
excursion  travel  which  pours  out  of  American  cities  in 
all  seasons,  but  especially,  of  course,  during  the  height  of 
summer.  Every  day,  simply  for  the  sake  of  the  breeze 
caused  by  the  motion  of  the  car  itself,  a  host  of  families 
leave  the  sun-baked  streets  for  an  hour's  run  in  pure  air. 
For  longer  excursions,  affording  visits  to  scenery  of  un- 
common beauty  or  historic  interest,  there  is  ample  oppor- 
tunity in  New  England.  "  Its  street-railways  form  the 
largest  connected  system  in  the  world,  running  from  Nashua, 
New  Hampshire,  on  the  north,  through  Boston  to  Newport 
and  Providence,  Rhode  Island,  on  the  south,  a  distant 
130  miles.  Eastward  they  extend  to  the  tip  of  Cape  Ann, 
some  45  miles,  and  westward  to  West  Warren,  Massachu- 
setts, some  So  miles."1  Such  a  series  of  lines  would  lend 
itself  to  a  charming  variety  of  tours.  All  that  is  necessary 
is  co-operation,  so  that  through  cars  may  be  run  of  a  thor- 
oughly comfortable  kind,  and  without  loss  of  time  as  a  pas- 
senger <  rosses  the  boundary  of  a  particular  road.  It  may 
be  that  for  such  a  development  as  this  the  consolidations 
long  ago  effected  in  steam  lines  may  be  needful. 

1  R.  II.  Derrab,  Street  Railway  Journal,  New  York,  July,  1S99. 


ALLIES    OR    RIVALS?  165 

While  all  this  extension  of  electric  traction  has  been 
pushed  forward,  the  managers  of  steam  lines  have  not  been 
passive  and  uninterested  spectators.  The 
New  York,  New  Haven  and  Hartford  The  Third-ran  system. 
Railroad  has  inaugurated  three  elec- 
tric lines  with  marked  success,  combining  the  trolley  and 
third-rail  systems  for  a  total  distance  of  49  miles.  In  the 
third-rail  method  two  rails,  as  usual,  bear  the  car-wheels,  a 
third,  laid  between  them,  serves  to  convey  the  current  to  a 
sliding  bar  or  shoe  attached  to  each  car.  Mr.  N.  H.  Heft, 
chief  of  the  electrical  department  of  this  railroad,  states 
(November  10,  1899): 

During  the  summer  months  the  Nantasket  Beach  service  is  ex- 
tended on  the  main  line  to  Braintree,  alternating  with  the  main-line 
electric  service.  This  main-line  service, which  is  the  heaviest  we  now 
operate,  consists  in  replacing  the  steam-locomotives  by  standard 
coaches  equipped  with  four  175-horse-power  motors,  and  hauling 
the  same  trains,  of  from  two  to  five  coaches,  without  change  of 
schedule.  We  have  under  consideration  the  construction  of  other 
lines,  both  third-rail  and  trolley,  the  third-rail  giving  the  better 
results  wherever  it  is  possible  to  operate  it. 

This  third  rail  is  easily  and  quickly  laid.  At  one  time 
all  three  rails  on  a  section  of  the  line  were  submerged  by 
water,  without  interruption  of  the  current.  The  third  rail 
provides  a  conductor  every  whit  as  efficient  as  a  large 
copper  cable,  and  the  escape  of  current  from  end  to  end  of 
the  line  is  but  slight  (Fig.  53). 

In    the   light    of    such    a   success   as    this    the    query   is 
prompted,  Will  electricity  displace  the  steam-locomotive? 
The   two  sides   of  the  ledger  are  easily 
compared.      At   a   central    station   coals    Rivalry  and  its  Prob. 
of    inferior   quality    may   be   burned,    or         able  Outcome, 
water-power  harnessed,  at  the  very  min- 
imum of  cost.      It  high  speed  be  wanted,  the  rotary  motor 
can    far    outspin    the    reciprocating   mechanism   of   steam. 
The  pistons  of  the  Empire  State  Express,  between  New 


166  ELECTRIC    MACHINERY 

York  and  Buffalo,  change  their  direction  eight  times  a  sec- 
ond, involving  a  tremendous  strain  on  the  metal.  The 
debit  side  of  the  account  displays  the  cost  of  fencing  the 
line  so  as  to  prevent  accidents  from  powerful  currents; 
and  the  fact  that,  with  a  supply  of  power  centralised  at 
a  single  point,  any  derangement  or  accident  works  much 
more  injur}-  than  when  the  units  are  independent  of  each 
other  as  self-moving  machines.  Reviewing  these  facts,  the 
consensus  of  competent  judges  is  that  in  sparsely  settled 
regions  through  which  the  average  locomotive  takes  its 
way  it  will  keep  its  place.  In  thickly  populated  districts, 
such  as  surround  a  metropolis  and  are  found  in  Massachu- 
setts and  Connecticut,  it  is  likely  that  electricity  will  con- 
stantly strengthen  its  grasp. 

The  question  is  one  of  finance  not  less  than  of  engineering. 
This  is  a  time  when  the  promoter  of  combination  is  in  the 
saddle;  we  are  likely  very  soon  to  see  steam  and  electric 
interests  lay  down  their  arms  and  compose  their  differences. 
Each  can  supplement  the  other's  deficiencies  with  profit  to 
both.  For  short  branches,  where  a  locomotive  would  be 
absurdly  underladen  in  hauling  a  car  or  two,  an  electric 
motor  would  come  in  as  cheaper  and  better.  On  such  lines 
the  road-bed,  bridges,  and  rolling  stock  could  be  lighter 
and  less  expensive  than  those  of  a  steam  line,  and  econom- 
ically furnish  a  more  frequent  service.  Where  the  trains 
are  heavy  and  comparatively  infrequent,  the  advantage 
remains    with    the    old    and    ponderous    steam-locomotive. 

While   increased  economy   of   railroad    engineering   and 

operation   has  brought  a  severe  competition  to  bear  upon 

the'  canals,  it  is  altogether  probable  that 

Electric  Traction  tne  r"sl  ' ''  canal  transportation  will  soon 
for  Canals.  ] K.    reduced    by   the    employment    of    the 

electric  motor.  It  is  expected  that  on 
the  Erie  (anal  at  least  two  hundred  electric  motors  will  be- 
at work  during  Hjuo. 


LOWERED    PRICES  167 

Electric  art  has  an  interesting  side  to  any  one  who   has 
ever   built   or   paid  for   an   experimental   model  and   con- 
trasted its  cost   with    that   of    a    similar 
article    manufactured    at    wholesale    by     A  Wider  Market  and 
machinery.       As    electrical    engineering  Lower  Prices, 

has  passed  from  the  experimental  to  the 
commercial  stage,  and  that  a  stage  of  huge  proportions,  its 
economies  have  rapidly  passed  from  little  to  much.  First 
of  all,  its  units  of  power  have  been  vastly  increased  in  size. 
Successive  improvements  in  design,  material,  and  arrange- 
ment unite  in  an  efficiency  simply  astonishing  when  the 
last  state  of  electric  mechanism  is  compared  with  the  first. 
As  a  consequence,  price-lists  have  been  steadily  scaled 
down,  except,  temporarily,  in  such  a  year  as  1899,  when 
the  metal  market  displayed  so  uncommon  an  advance. 
As  dynamos,  motors,  and  other  machinery  have  gained  in 
popular  acceptance  they  have  become  cheaper,  with  the 
effect  of  broadening  their  acceptance  yet  more. 

In  1884  a  50-kilowatt  (67-horse-power)  dynamo  was  con- 
sidered a  large  machine.  The  General  Electric  Company 
at  Schenectady,  New  York,  has  constructed  several  gen- 
erators, each  of  3 500  kilowatts  (4690  horse-power).  These 
monsters  have  a  three-phase  revolving  field  with  40  poles, 
and  run  at  a  speed  of  75  revolutions  a  minute,  yielding  a 
current  of  6600  volts.  In  1884  the  price  of  dynamos  was 
about  20  cents  per  watt  (7^6  horse-power),  while  the 
price  of  the  machine  just  mentioned  is  approximately  but 
1.2  cents  per  watt.  The  cost  of  generating  a  kilowatt  (1^ 
horse-power)  of  electric  energy  from  steam  appears  to  have 
been  at  least  7.5  cents  per  horse-power  in  1884.  At  the 
end  of  1899  the  cost  of  delivering  for  an  hour  a  kilowatt 
to  large  street-railway  systems  from  steam  is  only  one  cent, 
and  the  power-house  operating  costs  are  reported  in  some 
cases  as  low  as  half  a  cent.  Electric  energy  from  large 
water-powers  has  concurrently  fallen  in  price  in  much  the 


i68  ELECTRIC    MACHINERY 

same  ratio.  In  18S2  the  price  of  a  sixteen-candle  lamp 
was  about  a  dollar;  in  seventeen  years  the  price  has 
fallen  to  20  cents  in  lots  of  a  thousand,  with  special  dis- 
counts to  large  consumers.  During  the  same  interval  the 
price  of  plain  carbons  a  foot  long  and  half  an  inch  in 
diameter,  for  arc-lamps,  has  dropped  from  $60  to  $8.50 
per  thousand.  The  introduction  of  soft  steel  has  been  very 
advantageous  to  the  electric-railway  motor,  enabling  its 
output  to  be  increased  from  5  watts  per  pound  of  net 
weight,  in  1884,  to  I2i  watts  in  the  gearless,  and  18J,  in 
the  geared,  motors  of  the  largest  size  manufactured  by 
the  General  Electric  Company  at  the  end  of  1899. 

We  have  bestowed  a  glance  upon  electricity  in  its  larger 

services  to  the  engineer  and  mechanic  as  it  impels  the  huge 

bulk  of  an  express-train,  or  the  mighty 

Evenness  and  Delicacy  wheels  of  a  steel-mill.      Let  us  turn  for  a 

of  Motion  as  Creators  .  ,    ..  ...  . 

of  Automatic  Devices,  moment  to  the  more  delicate  qualitu 

the  current  which  commend  it  to  the 
mechanician  as  he  constructs  and  directs  tools  and  instru- 
ments of  consummate  ingenuity.  The  perfect  steadiness 
of  the  electric  motor  makes  it  indispensable  to  the  phono- 
graph, where  the  slightest  jolting  would  make  speech  or 
music  fall  into  a  confused  noise.  Its  flexibility  is  so  ex- 
quisite that,  revolving  the  surgeon's  tiny  saw,  it  equips  him 
for  operations  of  a  new  daring  and  refinement. 

The  current  has  characteristics  even  more  valuable  which 
spring  from  its  positive  action,  however  minute  its  quan- 
tity. In  the  telegraph  at  work  over  long  distances  this 
comes  clearly  into  view.  In  days  of  yore,  when  letters 
were  intrusted  to  a  chain  of  messengers,  each  of  whom  bore 
the  pouch  for  a  stage  of  its  journey,  a  carrier  might  come 
to  the  end  of  his  trip  utterly  fagged  out,  but  it'  he  had  the 
strength  to  pass  his  budget  to  the  next  man  it  was  enough. 
The  relays  of  olden  times  are  curiously  imitated  in  the  re- 
lays of  the  telegraph.     A  feeble   pulse  from  a  distance  is 


ELECTRIC    INITIATION  169 

just  strong  enough  to  lift  the  armature  of  an  electromagnet, 
but  in  doing  so  it  brings  one  wire  in  contact  with  another 
and  sends  a  strong  local  current  into  a  second  electro- 
magnet, which  may  be  as  powerful  as  you  please.  Let  us 
follow  a  telegram  as  it  takes  its  way  from  Montreal  to 
Vancouver  —  a  distance  of  2906  miles.  First  it  goes  to  Fort 
William,  at  the  head  of  Lake  Superior,  where  the  current, 
weak  after  its  run  of  998  miles,  touches  off  instantly,  through 
an  automatic  repeater,  a  second  powerful  current  generated 
at  Fort  William.  This,  in  turn,  bears  the  despatch  937 
miles  to  Swift  Current,  through  another  self-acting  repeater. 
In  like  manner  a  third  repeater  at  Swift  Current  sends  the 
message  971  miles,  for  its  final  stage  to  Vancouver.  The 
repeater  is  identical  in  principle  with  the  telegraphic  relay 
described  and  illustrated  in  the  next  chapter ;  given  a 
proper  succession  of  repeaters  and  it  would  be  easy  to 
belt  the  earth  with  a  single  electric  circuit. 

It  is  in  pulling  triggers  in  such  fashion  as  thic,  in  liber- 
ating and  directing  forces  indefinitely  greater  than  the 
initial  impulse,  that  electricity  confers  upon  muscles  of 
brass  and  steel  something  very  like  a  nervous  system,  so 
that  the  merest  touch  points  the  course  of  a  steamship 
through  the  tempest-tossed  Atlantic.  Engineer,  workman, 
and  artist  can  thus  reserve  their  strength  for  tasks  more 
profitable  than  muscular  dead  lift,  and  find  their  sweep  of 
initiation  and  control  broadened  to  the  utmost  bound.  In 
the  field  of  war,  for  instance,  a  torpedo  can  be  launched, 
propelled,  steered,  and  exploded  by  a  telegraph-key  a  mile 
or  two  away ;  the  constructor  may,  indeed,  confidently  give 
all  his  orders  in  advance  and  build  a  torpedo  which  will 
fulfil  a  fate  of  both  murder  and  suicide  predetermined  in 
its  cams  and  magnets. 

In  the  service  of  war  and  peace  one  would  suppose  the 
ordinary  telegraph  to  be  speedy  enough.  Not  so,  thinks 
the  inventor.     In  one  of  the  methods  due  to  Mr.  P.  B. 


i  jo  ELECTRIC    MACHINERY 

Delany,  a  despatch  wings  its  way  from  New  York  to  Chi- 
cago at  the  rate  of  one  thousand  words  a  minute,  to  Phila- 
delphia thrice  as  fast.  The  telegram  is  first  taken  to  a 
machine  which  perforates  each  letter  in  symbols  on  a  strip 
of  paper,  then  the  strip  is  run  between  a  row  of  metallic 
springs  of  exquisite  delicacy  (Fig.  64).  At  each  perforation 
the  springs  touch,  and  a  momentary  current  is  shot  through 
the  wire.  At  the  receiving-station  the  delay  involved  in 
the  arousal  and  motion  of  electromagnets  is  abolished. 
The  current  instant  by  instant  writes  its  message  on  a 
moving  ribbon  of  paper  sensitised  so  as  to  change  colour 
under  an  electric  flow.  This  instance  is  typical  of  what 
ingenuity  can  do  when  electricity  is  added  to  its  armoury. 
A  task  is  divided  between  an  operator  and  an  automatic 
machine  in  such  wise  that  intelligence  is  allotted  only  that 
part  for  which  intelligence  is  required,  while  for  the  re- 
maining part  the  utmost  speed  of  electrical  and  chemical 
action  is  invoked — of  a  pace  which,  in  this  particular  ex- 
ample, outstrips  the  most  dexterous  manipulation  sixtyfold. 
A  census  tabulator  invented  by  Mr.  Herman  Hollerith 
of  Washington,  and  adopted  by  the  Census  Bureau,  exalts 
by  a  noteworthy  step  the  quality  of  electrical  work  following 
mechanical  initiation  of  the  simplest.  Imagine  a  census  card 
divided  into  say  two  hundred  spaces.  John  Smith's  status 
is  registered  on  such  a  card  by  punching  holes  in  the 
squares  assigned  to  Male,  White,  Native  of  New  York, 
Reads  and  Writes,  Lawyer,  Married,  and  so  forth.  When 
the  card  bears  the  whole  of  its  story  it  is  laid  upon  a  machine 
and  a  lid  is  pressed  down.  In  the  machine  are  two  hundred 
needles,  each  corresponding  on  the  card  to  a  spare  which 
may  <>r  may  not  be  punched.  Wherever  a  needle  meet-  a 
perforation  it  passes  through  and  completes  an  electric 
circuit;  each  circuit  moves  a  specific  wheel  one  tooth  for- 
ward, the  Lawyer  wheel,  the  Married  wheel,  or  some  other. 

Accordingly,   if   the    Lawyer   wheel,   let   us  suppose,   had 


USES    OF    INSTANTANEITY  171 

borne  the  number  277  before  it  passed  upon  John  Smith's 
card,  that  card  now  advances  it  to  278,  which  figure  by  a 
simple  attachment  may  be  printed  as  desired. 

It  was  a  great  thought  in  numeration  when  the  position 
of  a  figure  became  significant  as  well  as  the  figure  itself — 
when  1  began  to  mean  10,  100,  or  1000  by  a  mere  change 
of  place.  Mr.  Hollerith's  devices,  in  which  position  means 
so  much,  are  now  applied  to  railroad  accounting  and  to  the 
digestion  of  statistics.  Their  principle  is  that  the  particu- 
lar place  of  a  perforation  among  hundreds  or  thousands  of 
others  registers  the  accession  of  any  fact  represented  in 
the  mechanism,  or  any  figure,  however  large.  Machinery 
similar  in  principle  is  now  employed  instead  of  a  mechan- 
ical Jacquard  in  weaving,  and  also  in  the  movements  of  an 
experimental  type-writer  which,  if  successful,  would  lead 
the  way  to  reducing  the  muscular  effort  of  keyboard  ma- 
nipulations— now  fast  extending  in  the  field  of  type- 
casting and  kindred  arts. 

All  this  and  much  other  ingenious  apparatus  is  created 
by  electricity  as  an  initiator  of  unrivalled  delicacy ;  many 
other  devices  as  remarkable   have  been 
born  from  the  virtual  instantaneity  of  its     Instantaneity  Made 
flight.      Of  this,  of  course,  the  supreme  Useful, 

example  is  telegraphy.  An  illustration 
remarkable  enough  is  the  mechanism  by  which  a  hundred 
or  more  clocks  in  a  city  keep  time  together,  minute  by 
minute,  or  second  by  second.  Two  pendulums  may  swing 
in  perfect  step,  no  matter  how  many  miles  apart,  and  dis- 
charge duties  much  less  simple  than  showing  the  hour. 
They  may  actuate  the  pencil  which  reproduces  a  portrait, 
or  which  writes  an  autograph,  or  which  traces  the  devious 
course  of  a  steamship  as  she  skirts  a  thousand  miles  of 
coast.  Some  of  the  most  noteworthy  mechanism  of  teleg- 
raphy and  the  long-distance  transmission  of  power  involves 
the  exquisite  synchronism  which  no  other  agent  but  elec- 


172  ELECTRIC    MACHINERY 

tricity  can  provide.  On  the  South  Side  Elevated  Railroad 
of  Chicago  each  car  has  a  motor  of  its  own;  any  number 
of  these  cars  may  be  joined  as  a  train,  since  all  the  motors 
revolve  with  even  step. 

A  current  has  the  speed  of  light;  it  has  also  the  ability 
of  light  to  communicate  impulses  of  broad  range  and  great 
complexity.  Ether  bears  to  the  eye  luminous  waves  of 
widely  various  dimensions,  each  exciting  the  sensation  of  a 
particular  hue  all  the  way  from  red  to  violet.  In  the  same 
fashion  electric  waxes  of  most  diverse  contour  may  be  com- 
mitted to  a  wire  in  the  full  confidence  that  they  will  arrive 
at  their  destination  without  the  slightest  jostling  or  confu- 
sion. Proceeding  upon  this  fact,  Professor  Elisha  Gray  de- 
vised his  harmonic  telegraph,  perhaps  with  an  inspiration 
due  less  to  the  phenomena  of  light  than  to  those  of  music. 
If  a  tuning-fork  be  struck  and  held  over  the  wires  of  a 
piano  it  will  arouse  to  sympathetic  vibration  the  wire  which 
utters  its  own  note,  but  none  other.  Each  of  the  several 
messages  in  the  harmonic  system  is  sent  into  the  telegraph 
line  by  a  special  tuning-fork,  vibrated  by  an  electro- 
magnet. The  composite  tone,  formed  of  the  whole  round 
of  messages,  as  it  arrives  at  the  receiving-station,  is  resolved 
into  its  component  tones  by  an  array  o(  harmonic  plates, 
each  attuned  to  one  of  the  notes  sent  into  the  line.  An  in- 
genious device  thereupon  converts  the  signals  into  the  or- 
dinary Morse  characters.  When  we  come  to  consider  the 
Marconi  wireless  telegraph  we  shall  see  how  much  it  would 
be  improved  by  the  adoption  of  a  harmonic  method  like 
this  for  it.'-  signals. 

The  electric  clock  at  which  we  were  looking  a  little  while 
ago  can,  if  we  phase,  be  sealed  in  a  glazed  box,  secure 
from  dust  and  dampness.  It  is  seclusion  like  this  which 
keeps  electric  motors  free  from  the  dirt  and  slush  beneath 
a  street-car,  or  preserves  them  aboard  ship  from  attack  by 
salt-laden    air.      Here   opens  a   fresh    path   to   the   inventor 


TOOL   AND   MOTOR    UNITED         173 

who  wishes  to  avoid  the  resistance  or  leakage  entailed  when 
a  rod  moves  through  a  slot  or  a  stuffing-box.      It  is  often 
of  cardinal  importance  that  a  bit  of  metal 
at  rest  should  throb  with  a  pulse  strong       A  New  Seclusion 
enough  to  do  severe  drudgery,  or  tell  a  is  Feasible. 

tale  which  otherwise  would  go  untold. 
If  an  engineer  wishes  to  know  how  much  heat  wastes 
itself  through  the  walls  of  a  steam-cylinder,  his  question  is 
answered  through  a  motionless  wire  attached  to  a  delicate 
thermometer  buried  in  the  cylinder's  mass.  The  same 
method  informs  the  chemist  experimenting  with  new  alloys 
of  changes  often  abrupt  and  fleeting,  and  at  times  denot- 
ing qualities  he  seeks  to  detain  or  reproduce. 

As  we  prove  when  we  unhook  a  telephone  or  lift  an 
incandescent  lamp,  electricity  readily  traverses  a  flexible 
wire ;  this  unbars  a  fresh  gate  to  inge- 
nuity. To-day  rock-drills,  coal-cutters,  A  New  Flexibility: 
and  deck-planers  are  designed  in  forms  Ether  Replacing  wires, 
that  combine  motor  and  tool,  actuated 
through  wires  as  flexible  as  twine ;  so  much  is  thereby 
gained  in  adaptability  that  much  light  machinery,  rigidly 
limited  in  play  by  shafts,  belts,  or  gearing,  is  being  remod- 
elled for  use  with  electric  power.  Drilling-,  slotting-,  and 
milling-machines  are  now  built  in  portable  forms;  they  are 
brought  to  bear  on  large  and  heavy  castings  with  an  ease 
and  convenience  new  in  the  machine-shop.  Dentistry  and 
other  arts  of  refined  manipulation  are  indebted  for  novel 
facilities  to  the  flexible  mechanical  shaft  —  a  tightly  wound 
coil  of  steel  wire.  This  contrivance  is  being  shown  to  the 
door  by  the  new  partnership  between  an  electric  thread 
and  a  tool.  Even  the  thread,  however  slender,  which  binds 
a  reservoir  of  power  to  its  work,  can,  on  occasion,  be  dis- 
carded, as  in  the  rolling  contact  of  a  trolley-wheel;  and 
contact  itself  may  be  dispensed  with  if  strict  economy  is 
not  imperative,  as  we  shall  see  by  and  by  when  we  come 


174  ELECTRIC  MACHINERY 

to  look  at  the  Preece  and  Marconi  plans  of  telegraphy 
without   connecting    wires. 

Electricity,  light,  heat,  and  chemical  action  are  all,  in 
essence,  motion;  electricity  is  the  most  desirable  of  them 
all,  because  it  can  most  readily  and 
The  Echo  of  fully   become   the  source   of  any   other, 

intelligence.  f}ie  pre-eminent  sensitiveness  of  electri- 
cal devices  makes  them  a  surpassing 
means  of  measuring  minute  portions  of  space  or  time,  or 
of  energy  in  its  most  elusive  phases.  Hence  a  brood  of 
telltales  of  widely  diversified  purpose.  Selenium,  a 
metalloid  of  the  same  lineage  as  sulphur,  and  betraying  its 
descent  by  a  striking  family  resemblance,  transmits  electri- 
city much  more  freely  in  light  than  in  darkness.  A  stick 
of  selenium,  therefore,  is  the  heart  of  a  contrivance  to  give 
warning  when  extinction  befalls  a  lamp  charged  with  im- 
portant duty,  or  to  register  the  fluctuations  of  natural  or 
artificial  light. 

In  thermometers  a  circuit  broken  or  completed  acts  as 
a  fire-signal,  or,  on  shipboard,  heralds  the  approach  of  an 
iceberg.  Electric  fingers  sound  a  gong  when  the  water 
recedes  below  the  safety  limit  in  a  steam-boiler,  or  report 
an  attempted  breach  of  bolt  or  bar  by  the  burglar's  jimmy. 
Each  of  these  warnings  can  be  registered  at  a  distance,  so 
that  in  case  of  neglect  to  heed  them  there  can  be  no  dis- 
puting the  fact.  Now,  if  an  electric  alarm  can  summon  a 
servant  to  duty,  why  may  not  the  inventor  go  farther,  and 
SO  add  to  his  device  that  it  shall  of  its  own  motion  do  what 
needs  to  be  done?  Accordingly  we  find  furnaces  fitted  up 
with  electrical  control,  so  that  the  draught  is  opened  or  fuel 
added  when  the  temperature  falls  too  low,  or  the  draught 
is  closed  when  the  flame  is  too  fierce;  if  the  fuel  i^  gas  this 
automatic  stoking  leaves  nothing  to  be  desired. 

In  rough  weather  the  propeller  ot  a  steamer  is  ever  and 
anon  lifted  out  of  the  water,  and,  thus  relieved  from  work, 


FLAME   ONCE   MORE   OUTDONE      175 

dashes  round  at  excessive  speed,  jarring  itself  and  the  ship 
dangerously  as  it  dips  again  into  the  sea.  A  recent  inven- 
tion provides  at  the  stern  of  the  vessel  an  electrical  lever 
which  at  the  moment  the  ship  "  heels  "  throttles  the  steam- 
valve  of  the  engine,  and  minimises  both  shock  and  hazard. 
New  mechanism  of  this  sort  is  constantly  being  contrived. 
The  inventor  who  began  by  conferring  electric  nerves  on 
muscles  of  brass  and  iron  has,  by  grace  of  electricity,  gone 
the  length  of  combining  his  wires  and  magnets  into  some- 
thing very  like  a  conscious  and  responsive  brain.  His  in- 
telligence culminates  in  duplicating  itself. 

All  this  has  followed  upon  the  mechanic's  adding 
electricity  to  fire  in  the  armoury  of  his  resources.  Flame 
acts  directly  within  but  a  few  inches  at 
the  farthest ;  its  rays  may  be  usefully  Electricity  Broadens 
transmitted  for  distances  scarcely  longer.  the  Field  of  Mechanics. 
The  one  mode  of  making  it  available  to 
the  mechanic  is  to  build  a  heat-engine,  and  derive  from  its 
elastic  gases  a  quantum  of  power  which  is  never,  at  the 
most,  but  a  modest  fraction  of  the  energy  applied.  An 
electric  motor  is  incomparably  simpler  and  more  adaptable 
than  a  heat-engine,  while  thoroughly  economical  of  the 
energy  it  receives.  And  mechanical  motion,  whether  im- 
parted to  ropes,  belts,  or  wires,  has  but  narrow  play — a 
mile  or  two  at  most.  Convert  this  power  into  electricity 
and  the  field  of  transmission  is  multiplied  fortyfold.  And 
all  this  because  a  magnet  has  the  unique  quality  of  receiv- 
ing molecular  undulations  not  less  swift  than  those  of  light, 
and  translating  them  into  the  rotation  of  an  armature  that 
weighs  tons  and  sweeps  a  circle  measured  in  yards. 
Through  this  magic  the  electrical  engineer  commands  me- 
chanical motion  which  rises  instantly  to  his  touch,  obeys 
his  will  minutely,  traverses  a  stretch  of  a  hundred  miles 
with  small  subtraction  as  it  goes,  and  swings  a  locomotive 
as  easily  as  it  lifts  a  silken  thread. 


176  ELECTRIC   MACHINERY 

This  chapter  has  touched  upon  points  so  diverse  that 
it  may  be  permissible  to  recall  them  in  a  closing  word. 
Common  mechanical  motion  is  profitably  superseded  by 
electricity  because  its  conductor  moves  not  as  a  mass,  but  in 
its  molecules  ;  the  higher  an  electrical  pressure,  the  narrower 
the  path  that  it  asks;  electricity  is  readily  changed  in  in- 
tensity ;  it  makes  a  unit  of  a  motor  and  a  tool  or  machine  ; 
it  brings  automaticity  to  its  utmost  bound,  so  that  human 
initiation  is  effective  as  never  before;  it  is  virtually  a  per- 
fect fluid,  so  that  a  single  centre  of  power  may  replace  with 
economy  a  score,  a  hundred,  or  a  thousand  engines  inher- 
ited from  pre-electric  days.  In  its  more  refined  applica- 
tions it  has  an  evenness  and  a  delicacy  unknown  prior  to 
its  introduction;  it  may  be  transmitted  with  full  effect  by 
the  merest  touch,  or  may  perform  its  tasks  at  a  distance, 
with  no  other  medium  than  the  universal  ether;  its  pace  is 
all  but  instantaneous,  so  that  synchronism  for  the  first  time 
is  available  in  apparatus  scattered  over  a  hundred  leagues 
and  more;  its  waves,  as  complex  as  those  of  light,  never- 
theless faithfully  bear  to  a  remote  destination  as  intricate  a 
series  of  impulses  as  those  which  stream  from  the  sun.  In 
every  iota  of  these  marvels  the  electric  wave  is  in  essence 
one  and  the  same  with  the  ray  of  flame,  but  how  much  has 
followed  upon  the  ability  to  convert  fire  into  a  servant  in- 
comparably more  versatile  —  which  conquers  a  thousand 
provinces  beyond  the  horizon  of  the  fire-kindler,  however 
far-sighted  and  bold ! 


CHAPTER   XIII 

TELEGRAPHY — LAND    LINES 

THE  telegraph,  one  of  the  first  pieces  of  mechanism  to 
be  actuated   by  electricity,  may  still   be  deemed  the 
most  important  of  all.      For  ages  one  of  the  principal  uses 
of   light   was   for  the   communication  of 
intelligence ;  it  may  be  many  a  long  day  Precursors, 

before  electricity  is  given  a  worthier 
task.  In  a  previous  chapter  the  employment  of  fire  as  a 
signaller  was  described,  more  especially  as  it  served  the 
aborigines  of  North  America.  In  other  parts  of  the  world 
as  ingenuity  rose  to  new  refinements  the  signals  of  a  flame 
were  diversified  by  changing  its  size,  by  separating  blaze 
from  blaze.  When  Troy  fell  before  Agamemnon,  in  the 
eleventh  century  B.  C,  the  news  was  borne  to  Clytem- 
nestra,  the  spouse  of  the  conqueror,  by  a  chain  of  beacons 
stretching  from  Mount  Ida  to  the  palace  of  the  queen  at 
Mycenae.  Polybius,  in  the  third  century  B.  C,  devised 
for  service  in  the  Punic  Wars  a  simple  telegraph  in  which 
an  array  of  torches,  by  turns  hidden  and  displayed,  fore- 
showed the  modern  electric  alphabet.  That  these  torches 
might  be  replaced  by  shields  or  flags  in  the  daytime  does 
not  seem  to  have  occurred  to  any  inventor  for  centuries, 
until,  in  1680,  Dr.  Hooke,  the  famous  English  mechanician, 
devised  an  apparatus  of  coloured  blocks,  whose  disposal  was 
regulated  by  a  pre-arranged  code. 

i77 


178         TELEGRAPHY— LAND    LINES 

Across  the  Channel  there  was  to  be  contrived  in  France 
a  telegraph  more  ingenious  still  —  nothing  short  of  the  pa- 
rent of  the  semaphores  which  to  this  hour  swing  their  col- 
oured lanterns  by  night  and  arms  by  day  over  the  tracks  of 
railroads.  Toward  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century  there 
were  three  brothers  Chappe,  all  students,  one  at  the  Sem- 
inar)- of  Angers,  the  other  two  at  a  private  school  a  little 
more  than  a  mile  from  the  town.  Claude,  the  seminarian, 
wishing  to  communicate  with  his  brothers,  fastened  to  a 
bar  of  wood  two  wing-pieces,  movable  at  pleasure.  He 
could  thus  produce  signals  clearly  visible  to  the  spy-glass 
of  his  brethren. 

The  first  public  exhibition  of  the  contrivance  took  place 
in  1 791;  after  the  device  had  been  materially  improved 
it  was  adopted  by  the  government  of  France,  and,  in  1793, 
brought  from  the  frontier  to  Paris  the  news  of  the  capture 
of  Conde  from  the  Austrians.  In  forms  variously  modified, 
the  Chappe  telegraph  found  its  way  to  Denmark,  Belgium, 
and  Germany,  to  Sweden  and  Russia.  On  a  plan  specially 
adapted  to  the  service  of  scouting  and  exploring  parties,  to 
travellers  unable  to  cumber  themselves  with  weighty  ap- 
paratus, another  group  of  inventors  combined  flags  and 
streamers  in  such  wise  as  to  communicate  with  readiness 
and  ease.  This  is  the  system  common  in  the  mercantile 
marine;  it  forms  one  of  the  diverse  telegraphic  resources 
of  both  armies  and  navies.  A  more  important  auxiliary  in 
military  manoeuvres  and  in  the  service  of  the  Weather 
Bureau,  the  heliograph,  is  much  the  most  efficient  device 
of  its  class.  It  employs  a  small  mirror,  so  accurately  sur- 
faced and  poised  as  to  send  a  beam  of  light  as  far  as  twenty- 
five  miles.  Usually  this  beam  is  interrupted  by  the  hand 
or  a  sheet  of  cardboard  so  as  to  spell  out  words  in  the 
Morse  alphabetic  code. 

All  these  contrivances,  old  or  new,  suffer  from  serious 
restrictions.     They  are  available  for  the  most  part  only  tor 


BEGINNINGS  179 

short  distances,  comparatively  speaking;  they  are  useless 
when  an  object  comes  between  the  signal  and  the  distant 
eye ;  in  fog,  or  mist,  or  storm,  they  pass  from  sight.  The 
light  which  gives  direction  or  warning,  declares  distress,  or 
tells  a  story,  runs  only  in  straight  lines,  which  must  suffer 
no  interruption  in  their  course,  moderate  though  that  course 
may  be.  When  light  gives  place  to  her  twin  sister  elec- 
tricity, it  is  as  if  a  ray  were  confined  to  a  path  no  broader 
than  a  wire,  and  followed  the  metal  through  every  twist 
and  turning  for  miles.  Sunshine  or  darkness,  storm  or 
calm,  makes  little  difference  to  the  electric  throb ;  it  bears 
a  message  as  distinctly  beneath  the  Atlantic  as  across  a 
county.  Little  danger  of  signals  being  read  by  a  foe  when 
not  only  the  means  but  the  very  fact  of  communication  is 
concealed. 

The  pioneers  of  electric  telegraphy  were  many ;  we  can 
recall  only  a  few  of  them.      In  1  747  Dr.  William  Watson,  in 
London,  sent  a  flash  through  12,276  feet 
of  wire,  and  observed   its   transit   to   be  Pioneers, 

instantaneous.  This,  however,  was  not 
telegraphy,  but  simply  the  proving  that  frictional  electricity 
could  be  sent  for  a  comparatively  long  distance.  It  was  Le 
Sage  of  Geneva  who,  in  1774,  constructed  the  first  actual 
telegraph.  He  suspended  twenty-four  insulated  wires,  and 
apportioned  a  letter  of  the  alphabet  to  each  of  them.  To 
the  end  of  every  wire  a  pair  of  pith-balls  was  suspended. 
Whenever  the  opposite  end  of  a  line  was  in  communication 
with  the  conductor  of  an  electrical  machine,  the  two  balls 
of  that  line  became  similarly  electrified  and  flew  apart. 
Lomond  of  Paris  saw  how  these  twenty-four  wires  might  be 
reduced  to  one  wire  by  using  a  single  pair  of  pith-balls  and 
denoting  each  letter  by  a  certain  number  of  divergencies. 
An  apparatus  on  the  plan  of  signalling  by  sparks  was  set 
up  by  Salva,  in  Madrid,  in  1798,  and  gave  fair  results  over 
a  line   nearly  half  a  mile   in   length.      It  was   thus  plainly 


180         TELEGRAPHY— LAND    LINES 

demonstrated  that  an  electric  telegraph,  for  short  distances 
at  least,  was  perfectly  feasible. 

Hut  the  kind  of  electricity  which  thus  far  had  been  em- 
ployed was  suited  only  to  experiments  curious  rather  than 
useful.  The  lightning  of  a  frictional  machine  sent  into  the 
wire  was  too  extreme  in  its  tension,  and  too  minute  in  its 
quantity,  for  a  really  practical  telegraph.  To  insulate  the 
conducting  metal  for  more  than  two  miles  or  so  was  barely 
possible,  while  the  impulses  at  the  end  of  their  journey 
were  too  much  enfeebled  to  be  trustworthy  as  signals. 
What  was  needed  was  the  steady  flow  of  electricity  from 
dissolving  metal,  which  Volta,  in  1800,  provided  in  the  cells 
of  his  battery.  In  1809  Sommering  applied  the  voltaic 
current  for  the  first  time  in  the  service  of  a  telegraph  ;  but 
unfortunately  he  relied  upon  the  power  of  the  current  to 
decompose  water,  and  this  slow  process  rendered  his  at- 
tempts of  no  avail.  In  18 16  Francis  Ronalds  erected  a 
telegraph  which  used  frictional  shocks;  his  rare  ingenuity 
thus  misdirected  came  to  nothing.  Why,  we  may  ask,  did 
so  able  a  man  take  an  utterly  wrong  path?  We  should 
remember  that  at  the  time  of  Ronalds  the  identity  of 
electricity  from  friction  and  from  chemical  solution  was 
far  from  clear,  and  that  until  Daniel!  invented  his  cell,  in 
1836,  there  was  no  voltaic  battery  yielding  a  fairly  constant 
stream. 

Next  in  importance  for  telegraphy  to  the  contrivance  of 
the  cell  by  Volta,  and  of  its  improved  form  by  Daniell, 
was  the  discovery  by  ( >rsted,  in  1820,  of  the  deflection  of 
a  compass-needle  as  a  current  sped  through  a  neighbouring 
wire.  Here,  to  the  clear  eye  of  Ampere,  was  a  means  of 
receiving  a  message  at  once  more  forcible  and  trustworthy 
than  any  swing  of  the  pith-balls  of  early  experiment. 
Schweigger,  also  in  1820.  discovered  that  the  deflecting 
power  of  a  current  was  multiplied  when  he  wound  a  coil 
of  wire   round   the   needle    instead   of  using  a  solitary  wire. 


HENRY,  THE   LEADER  181 

He  thus  constructed  the  first  galvanometer,  an  instrument 
since  refined  to  the  utmost  delicacy  as  a  measurer  of  ex- 
tremely minute  currents.  When,  four  years  later,  Stur- 
geon invented  the  electromagnet  a  new  and  invaluable 
gift  was  handed  to  telegraphy  as  well  as  to  other  electric 
arts. 

Joseph  Henry,  in  1831,  was  engaged  as  a  teacher  at  the 
Albany  Academy,  in  Albany,  New  York,  where,  as  we  have 
already  noted  in  a  preceding  chapter,  he 
had  much   improved  the    electromagnet       Practical  Success, 
devised  by  Sturgeon.     He  now  employed 
it    for   the    first    electromagnetic   telegraph,  which   is  thus 
described  in   his   own  words : 


I  arranged,  around  one  of  the  upper  rooms  in  the  Albany 
Academy,  a  wire  of  more  than  a  mile  in  length,  through  which  I 
was  enabled  to  make  signals  by  sounding 
a  bell.  The  mechanical  arrangement  for 
effecting  this  object  was  simply  a  steel 
bar,  permanently  magnetised,  of  about  ten 
inches  in  length,  supported  on  a  pivot,  and 
placed  with  its  north  end  between  the  two 
arms  of  a  horseshoe  magnet.  When  the 
latter  was  excited  by  the  current,  the  end 
of  the  bar,  thus  placed,  was  attracted  by  FlG   -. 

one  arm  of  the    horseshoe   and   repelled  „  .         , 

,        ,  ,  ,  ,  ,       L  Henry  telegraph, 

by  the  other,  and  was  thus  caused  to  more 

in  a  horizontal  plane,  and  its- farther  extremity  to  strike  a  bell 

suitably   adjusted  (Fig.  54). 


In  1833  Professor  Weber  built  a  line  of  telegraph  which, 
instead  of  being  confined  within  the  walls  of  a  room,  went 
forth  into  the  open.  It  connected  the  Observatory  of  Got- 
tingen  with  the  Cabinet  of  Physics,  and  was  about  six  thou- 
sand feet  in  length.  The  use  of  this  line  was  purely  in  the 
interests  of  electrical  science ;  the  motions  of  its  galva- 
nometer were  read  not  as  a  means  of  communication  but  as 
denoting  how  a  current  was  affected  by  a  journey  through 


182         TELEGRAPHY— LAND    LINES 

so  long  a  conductor.  In  1837  Steinheil  built  a  line  from 
the  Royal  Academy,  Munich,  to  the  Observatory,  Bogen- 
hausen,  a  distance  of  three  miles.  Felt  was  used  as  the 
insulator,  and  proved  very  defective.  The  first  line 
constructed  in  England,  two  years  later,  was  a  success 
from  the  outset.  It  joined  the  Paddington  Station  of  the 
Great  Western  Railway,  in  London,  to  West  Drayton, 
thirteen  miles  off.  Its  designers,  Wheatstone  and  Cooke, 
inclosed  six  copper  wires  in  a  wrought-iron  tube  an  inch 
and  a  half  in  diameter,  laid  six  inches  above  the  ground 
alongside  the  railway.  The  wires  within  the  tube  were 
insulated  from  each  other  by  a  covering  of  hemp.  In 
1842  Cooke  adopted  the  plan  of  suspending  the  wires 
on  poles,  and  of  insulating  them  by  conical  supports  of 
stone  or  earthenware,  soon  discarded  for  porcelain  and 
glass. 

In  America  telegraphy  still  remained  in  the  experimental 
stage.  Morse,  in  1832,  conceived  the  idea  of  an  electric 
telegraph,  and,  in  complete  ignorance  of  what  Henry  and 
other  inventors  had  accomplished,  began  the  making  of 
instruments  and  experimental  lines.  In  1837  he  exhibited 
the  successful  transmission  of  a  message  through  [700  feet 
of  copper  wire  stretched  about  the  walls  of  a  room  in  the 
University  of  the  City  of  New  York,  in  Washington  Square. 
In  his  further  efforts  Morse  now  associated  himself  with 
Alfred  Vail,  to  whose  ingenuity  the  alphabet  known  by  the 
name  of  Morse  is  really  due.  As  originally  designed  the 
raph  of  Morse  transmitted  only  numerals,  and  these 
were  interpreted  by  means  of  a  dictionary  whose  words 
were  numbered.  In  devising  his  alphabet,  Mr.  Vail  ton- 
suited  with  the  type-setters  employed  upon  the  local  news- 
paper at  his  home,  Morristown,  New  Jersey.  They  informed 
him  that  the  most  frequently  used  letter  was  <•,  and  recognis- 
ing that  it  should  have  the  quickest  made  sign,  he  gave  it 
a  single  dot.      To  the  other  letters  he  assigned  the  easiest 


THE   PUBLIC    HESITATES  183 

made  dot-and-dash  characters  in  accordance  with  their 
relative  frequency  of  use.1 

In  1843,  after  a  prolonged  struggle,  Congress  voted 
Morse  a  grant  of  $30,000  wherewith  to  build  an  experi- 
mental line  from  the  capital  to  Baltimore.  The  next  year, 
on  the  completion  of  the  work,  a  convincing  proof  was 
given  of  the  value  of  electrical  communication.  The  Na- 
tional Convention  to  nominate  a  President  was  sitting  in 
Baltimore.  James  K.  Polk  had  been  nominated  for  the 
Presidency ;  Senator  Silas  Wright,  then  in  Washington,  for 
the  Vice-Presidency.  Mr.  Vail  telegraphed  this  to  Mr. 
Morse,  who  immediately  told  Senator  Wright.  His  re- 
sponse, forthwith  transmitted  to  Baltimore,  was  a  respectful 
declination.  The  convention  could  not  believe  the  mes- 
sage to  be  authentic,  and  accordingly  despatched  a  com- 
mittee to  Washington  to  confer  with  their  nominee.  The 
telegram  was,  of  course,  confirmed,  and  the  fame  of  elec- 
tricity as  a  messenger  went  the  length  and  breadth  of  the 
Union. 

Despite  this  triumph  of  the  great  initial  experiment, 
there  was  disappointment  in  store  for  Morse  and  his  fellow- 
workers.  While  the  investigator  and  the  inventor  have 
their  parts  to  play  in  the  promotion  of  science  and  its  ap- 
plication to  the  useful  arts,  the  public,  also,  has  something 
to  do  with  the  success  of  their  toil.  Without  an  enlight- 
ened demand  for  the  telegraph  all  the  labours  of  Morse,  and 
of  the  predecessors  from  whom  he  inherited  so  much,  would 
have  been  fruitless.  On  April  1,  1845, the  nne  from  Wash- 
ington to  Baltimore,  which  had  been  worked  as  a  curiosity, 

1  The  code  known  as  the  Morse  is  as  follows  : 


A  . 

-   B  —  .  . 

.C..     .     D  —  .  .   E  .   F  .   —  .  G 

.   H  . 

I  . 

•  J  -  •    - 

.   K  —  .   —   L  M N  —  .   0  .   . 

P  .  . 

Q  • 

.   —  .   R  . 

..S...T-U..-V...-W. 

—   — 

x  . 

—  .  .  Y  .  . 

.  .   Z.   .  .     .  &  .     ... 

1  . 

6  . 

7  - 

..8  —  ....9  —  ..  —  0  

I 84 


TELEGRAPHY— LAND    LINES 


was  opened  for  public  business.  Its  income  for  the  first 
nine  days  of  operation  was  $3,094.'  If  the  public  had  not 
soon  awakened  to  what  the  telegraph  stood  ready  to  do 
for  them,  the  enterprise  would  have  perished  in  its  cradle. 
As  lines  were  lengthened  from  the  needs  of  experiment 
to  meet  the  demands  of  commerce  and  the  press,  there 
arose  important  questions  of  mechanical  detail,  of  disposal, 

and  of  insulation. 
In  Chapter  XII 
a  word  was  said 
about  the  high 
value  of  a  feeble 
current  as  it  starts 
off  currents  vastly 
strongerthan  itself, 
much  as  if  a  giant 
at  the  touch  of  a 
babe  delivered  a 
£  tremendous  blow. 
In  a  telegraphic 
relay,  the  arriving 
impulse,  very  weak 
though  it  may  be,  is  still  equal  to  making  one  wire  touch 
another,  thus  bringing  into  play  a  powerful  local  current, 

1  I  Hiring  the  first  four  days  the  receipts  amounted  to  one  cent.  This  was 
obtained  from  an  office-seeker,  who  said  that  he  had  nothing  else  than  a  twenty- 
dollar  bill  and  one  cent,  and,  with  the  modesty  of  liis  class,  wanted  to  see  the 
operation  free.  This  was  refused  because  against  orders.  He  \\  as  then  told  that 
he  could  have  a  cent's  worth  of  telegraphy,  to  which  he  agreed.  He  was 
gratified  in  the  following  manner:  Washington  asked  Baltimore," 4 ? "  which 
meant  in  the  list  of  signals,  "What  time  is  it?*'  Baltimore  replied,  "  1," 
which  meant,  "  ( >ne  o'cloi  k."  This  was  one  character  each  way,  w  hich,  accord- 
ing to  the  tariff,  would  amount  to  half  a  cent.  The  man  paid  his  one  cent,  de- 
clined  the   changff,  and    went    his  way.      This  was   the   revenue   for   lour  days. 

On  the  fifth  1 2 }.  cents  wen-  received.  The  sixth  was  the  Sabbath.  On  the 
seventh  the  revenue  ran  up  to  60  cents.  <  >n  the  eighth  to  $1.32.  On  the 
ninth  they  were  $1.04. —  Janus  1).  Reid,  The  Telegraph  in  America,  New 
York,  1886. 


Fig.  55. 
Telegraph  relay. 


ONE  WIRE   ENOUGH  185 

which  either  speeds  a  message  for  a  farther  stage  of  its 
journey,  or  actuates  a  local  sounder  which  utters  the  mes- 
sage in  loud,  unmistakable  tones  (Fig.  55).  The  armature 
lever  L  plays  between  two  stops,  tly  /._>,  under  the  influence 
of  attraction  by  the  electromagnet  R  and  the  retractile 
spiral  spring.  When  attracted  by  R,  the  lever  closes  the 
circuit,  through  the  local  battery  e,  the  stop  t2,  and  the 
sounder  S.     AB  is  the   main-line   circuit. 

Discovery  as  well  as  invention  has  smoothed  the  path  of 
telegraphy.  In  1872  Joseph  B.  Stearns  showed  how  a 
single  wire  can  bear  two  messages  at  once ;  on  trunk-lines, 
always  busy,  he  thus  cut  down  the  cost  of  wires  by  one- 
half.  His  method  will  be  described  in  Chapter  XV. 
Thirty-six  years  before  his  achievement  a  remarkable  dis- 
covery reduced  in  the  same  proportion  all  wires,  whether 
those  of  main  lines  or  any  other.  In  1838  Steinheil  ex- 
perimented on  the  line  of  the  Nurnberg-Further  Railroad 
with  a  view  to  ascertaining  if  the  track  could  be  used  in- 
stead of  one  of  the  two  ordinary  telegraphic  wires.  He  ob- 
served that  the  current  passed  from  one 
rail  to  another  through  the  earth.  It 
occurred  to  him  that  it  might  be  feasible 
to  use  the  ground  itself  as  the  return  half 
of  a  circuit  and  thus  dispense  with  the 
costly  return  wire.  An  experiment,  forth- 
with entered  upon,  satisfied  him  of  the 
correctness  of  his  surmise.  Before  this 
great  discovery  every  telegraphic  circuit 
had    demanded    two    complete    lengths 

of  wire,  both    connected    to   the  instru- 

.  .  Fig.  56. 

ments  at  the  ends  of  a  line.      Ever  since     0        ,.          . 

Grounding  a  circuit. 

Steinheil's    decisive    experiment     broad 
plates  or  sheets  of  metal  buried  in  the  ground,  and  attached 
to  both  ends  of  a  line,  have  taken  the  place  of  the  long  and 
costly  second   wire   once  deemed   indispensable  (Fig.  56). 


186        TELEGRAPHY— LAND   LINES 

The  telegraph-key  K  in  its  normal  position  is  kept  in  con- 
tact with  stop  3  by  means  of  a  spring,  and  thus  main- 
tains the  line-wire  in  connection  with  the  earth  through 
the  plate  E.  When  the  key  is  depressed  2  is  brought  into 
contact  with  1,  and  the  current  from  the  batter)-  11  sends 
a  signal  through  the  line. 

How  best  to  dispose  the  wires  of  a  telegraph  was  not  at 
first  very  clear.  For  the  inaugural  line  from  Washington 
to  Baltimore  Morse  began  by  adopting  the  plan  of  burying 
his  wires,  covered  with  cotton  and  shellac,  and  drawn 
through  lead  pipes.  When  ten  miles  of  this  cable  had 
been  laid  it  proved  a  total  failure.  At  the  instance  of  Kzra 
Cornell,  the  wires  were  now  placed  on  poles,  after  the  fash- 
ion introduced  by  Cooke  in  England.  The  result  was  a 
gratifying  success.  Year  by  year  much  was  learned  as 
aerial  wires  were  compared  with  subterranean — for  in  some 
cases,  as  in  railroad  tunnels  and  the  like,  it  was  necessary  to 
carry  wires  underground.  It  was  ascertained  that  the  air 
retarded  a  signal  scarcely  at  all,  while  the  earth  held  it 
back  perceptibly  if  the  line  were  long.  This  early  study 
of  induction  had  important  developments,  as  we  shall 
presently  see  when  we  consider  telegraphic  wires  submerged 
beneath  the  Atlantic  Ocean. 

Insulation,  too,  was  a  matter  of  moment  from  the  first. 
Cornell's  original  insulators  were  small  pieces  of  common 
window-glass,  which  he  fastened  above  and  below  a  wire 
(Fig.  57).      Retaining  the  material,  the 

_J — 1  _  J  ...J form  was  soon  changed  for  the  conical 

shape  now  familiar.     In  England,  where 


the  damp  air  readily  deposits  moisture 
pig.  57-  ' 

First  glass  insulator.       on  &lass.  porcelain  was  soon  introduced, 
and   has    now    won    its   way   the   world 
over.      At  this  point  we  may  note  a  singular  analogy  be- 
tween   li^ht    and    electricity.       Sunshine    at    high    noon    is 
blocked   by  a  sheet  of   iron   no   thicker  than   tissue-paper. 


CIRCUITS    LENGTHENED  187 

The  opacity  of  the  metal  to  the  solar  ray  is  paralleled 
by  the  imperviousness  of  glass  to  the  electric  pulse.  Mr. 
A.  E.  Kennelly  says  that  glass  at  ordinary  temperatures  is 
roughly  ten  thousand  millions  of  millions  of  millions  of 
times  more  resistant  than  copper.  It  is  plain  that  although, 
in  some  degree  or  other,  all  substances  are  conductors, 
their  quality  is  apt  to  be  extreme  in  either  goodness  or 
badness.  And  we  must  not  miss  the  fact  that  glass,  which 
transmits  light  so  well,  obstructs  electricity  almost  perfectly. 
Light  consists  in  waves  which  vary  little  from  40000  of  an 
inch  in  length ;  electric  waves  may  be  millions  or  even 
billions  of  times  longer;  from  this  difference  in  dimensions 
may  arise  their  highly  contrasted  powers  of  penetration. 

Small  though  the  loss  at  a  single  insulator  on  a  telegraph- 
pole  may  be,  that  loss  on  a  long  line  is  multiplied  by  a  high 
figure.  If  there  are  twenty-five  poles  to  a  mile,  there  are 
twenty-five  thousand  insulators  on  a  stretch  of  a  thousand 
miles,  and  their  leakage  in  the  aggregate  plainly  limits  any 
single  telegraphic  circuit.  In  lengthening  circuits,  much 
has  been  done  by  improving  the  quality  of  the  conductor. 
Iron,  which  is  in  common  use  for  comparatively  short  lines, 
has  the  merit  of  cheapness ;  moreover,  when  galvanised,  or 
coated  with  zinc,  it  resists  atmospheric  corrosion.  The  ad- 
vantage, too,  of  either  iron  or  steel  is  that  its  great  tensile 
strength  permits  the  engineer  to  place  his  poles  at  twen- 
tieths of  a  mile  on  minor  lines,  thus  reducing  the  number 
of  insulators  at  which  the  current  may  escape.  Of  course, 
it  was  known  at  the  outset  of  telegraphic  practice  that 
copper  is  a  much  better  conductor  than  iron,  and  in  no  less 
a  degree  than  sixfold.  But  copper  as  manufactured  in 
those  early  days  was  impure,  and  the  trace  of  arsenic  which 
it  sometimes  held  lowered  its  conductivity  as  much  as  two- 
fifths.  Thanks,  however,  to  electrolytic  deposition,  copper 
is  now  produced  in  all  but  absolute  purity,  while,  through 
a  suggestion  of  Mr.  T.  B.  Doolittle  of  Boston,  it  is  hard 


iSS         TELEGRAPHY— LAND    LINKS 

drawn  so  as  to  compete  with  iron  in  strength  without  sacri- 
fice of  conducting  quality.  Hence  it  is  that  we  have  to- 
day copper  telegraphic  circuits  a  thousand  miles  in  extent, 
whereas  four  hundred  miles  is  the  longest  stretch  possi- 
ble to  iron.  The  copper  circuit  of  iooo  miles  has  a  re- 
sistance of  but  4  ohms ;  an  iron  circuit  of  400  miles  has  a 
resistance  of  19  ohms.  For  important  trunk-lines  it  is 
deemed  an  advantage  to  employ  the  comparatively  dear 
metal  from  its  high  efficiency  and  small  liability  to  accident. 
Within  a  few  weeks  after  its  installation  as  a  public  servant 
both  in  Europe  and  America,  the  electric  telegraph  began 

its  career  as  one  of  the  chief   resources 

The  Gifts  of  the        °f  civilised  man.      It  was  almost  as  if  he 

Telegraph.  could  make  his  voice  heard  at  the  ends 

of  the  earth  ;  there  was  all  the  gain  that 
comes  from  knowing  an  event  of  importance  at  once  instead 
of  only  after  a  messenger  has  finished  a  journey  of  days, 
or  weeks,  or  even  months.  Incalculable  were  the  allevia- 
tions of  suffering  and  distress  which  at  once  became  possible. 
When  a  threatening  illness  demanded  the  aid  of  a  distant 
physician  or  surgeon,  he  could  be  summoned  without  the 
delay  of  a  moment.  If  cholera,  or  other  pest,  invaded  a 
port,  the  neighbouring  country  could  be  apprised  forthwith, 
and  set  up  its  defences  unperturbed  by  panic. 

In  uncounted  minor  services  the  anxieties  and  suspense 
common  in  a  former  age  are  banished  by  the  telegraph. 
The  minute  that  a  steamer  comes  near  Sandy  Hook,  or 
Southampton,  the  news  may  be  communicated  to  a  pas- 
senger's family;  if  an  invalid  goes  to  southern  California, 
or  to  Italy,  his  friends  in  the  North  may  have  a  daily  bul- 
letin of  his  health  as  new  scenes  and  balmy  air  work  their 
restoration.  In  a  tho'isand  ways  the  telegraph  gives  us 
new  safeguards  against  accident  and  loss  of  life.  A  sudden 
ice-shove  covers  the  Lack  of  a  bridge  over  the  St.  Law- 
rence ;  instantly  a  despatch  prevents  a  train   from  entering 


ELECTRIC    UBIQUITY  189 

the  structure.  A  steamboat  is  about  to  put  out  to  sea 
at  its  usual  hour;  word  comes  from  the  Weather  Bureau 
that  the  storm  which  seems  but  moderate  is  likely  to 
rise  to  fury  in  a  few  hours;  the  captain  heeds  the  warn- 
ing, and  escapes  destruction  for  himself,  his  passengers,  and 
his  crew. 

Less  important,  but  quite  as  striking,  are  the  benefits 
which  the  telegraph  confers  by  making  human  effort  more 
efficient  than  when  it  was  ignorant  of  facts  bearing  vitally 
upon  the  gainfulness  of  its  tasks.  A  vessel  is  despatched 
from  Yokohama  to  San  Francisco,  and  whither  it  shall  next 
turn  its  prow  depends  upon  instructions  from  the  owners  in 
Liverpool.  It  may  carry  harvesting -machinery  to  Sydney, 
New  South  Wales,  or  take  a  cargo  of  wheat  to  Glasgow. 
A  cotton-mill  in  Massachusetts  is  destroyed  by  fire.  Before 
the  hose  has  ceased  to  play  upon  its  smoking  walls  new 
looms  are  being  packed  in  Lancashire  to  take  the  first 
steamer  to  Boston.  The  owner  of  that  mill,  as  he  scans 
his  newspaper  every  morning  and  night,  can  learn  to  the 
hundredth  part  of  a  cent  how  much  his  raw  cotton  will  cost 
him  if  he  buys  it  now,  to  meet  in  advance  nearly  a  year's 
requirement.  Quotations  of  "futures"  such  as  these  are 
possible  because  thousands  of  observers  in  the  cotton  belt, 
the  iron  regions,  the  copper  country,  are  telegraphing 
their  reports  day  by  day  to  the  exchanges  of  the  world. 
Money,  to-day,  has  all  the  fluidity  of  electricity  itself. 
Across  national  frontiers,  or  divided  by  the  breadth  of  half 
the  planet,  bankers  are  in  the  closest  touch.  If  money  is 
scarce  in  London,  New  York  extends  immediate  aid ;  if 
Berlin  or  Amsterdam  offers  a  new  loan,  investors  in  Chi- 
cago and  Philadelphia  may  subscribe  as  soon  as  if  they 
dwelt  in  the  German  or  the  Dutch  capital.  Modern  wars 
dismiss  through  the  telegraph  one  of  the  horrors  incident 
to  ancient  modes  of  communication.  Before  electric  teleg- 
raphy it  sometimes  happened  that  battles  were  fought  days, 


390         TELEGRAPHY— LAND    LINES 

or  even  weeks,  after  a  formal  treaty  of  peace  had  been 
signed  by  the  principals  concerned. 

Let  us  note  a  typical  case  or  two  of  the  economic  revo- 
lution wrought  by  the  telegraph.  A  manufacturer  of 
tweeds  in  Scotland  sends  his  travelling  agents  to  every 
quarter  of  the  globe,  and  requires  them,  on  occasion,  to 
supplement  their  letters  with  despatches  which  may  mean 
a  sentence  in  a  word  —  thanks  to  the  ingenuity  of  code- 
makers.  He  thus  avoids  weaving  so  much  as  a  single 
yard  of  cloth  for  chance  sale,  and  the  cost  and  risk  of 
keeping  a  large  variety  of  goods  for  inspection  is  abolished. 
The  same  method  it  is  which  more  and  more  puts  the  small 
premises  of  the  commission  agent,  with  its  cupboard  of 
samples,  where  stood  the  large  and  expensive  warehouse 
which  was  formerly  the  sole  means  of  bringing  together 
the  manufacturer  and  the  merchant. 

In  a  field  indefinitely  broader  the  master  of  a  great  in- 
dustry— iron-mining,  steel-making,  the  refining  of  oil  or 
sugar — is  seated  at  the  centre  of  a  vast  web,  from  which 
he  observes  and  regulates  a  thousand  subordinates,  and 
makes  the  rill  of  gain  that  each  creates  converge  with  the 
utmost  directness  into  one  huge  reservoir  It  is  the  tele- 
graph which  gives  a  thousand  facets  to  the  eyes  of  such  a 
man  as  this,  and  enables  him  to  act  the  part  of  a  leader  to 
an  orchestra  of  stupendous  proportions  and  diversity.  We 
must  bear  in  mind  that  often  the  more  comprehensive  a 
business  becomes  the  simpler  it  -rows  in  important  respects. 
It'  one  concern  operates  a  mine,  and  another  works  up  the 
iron  from  its  ore  into  bars,  rails,  and  plates,  there  is  abun- 
dant opportunity  for  misunderstandings  and  maladjustments 
between  the  two.  All  these  disappear  when  the  two  con- 
cerns unite.  Under  a  single  chief  a  falling  off  in  the  de- 
mand for  rails  will  be  immediately  reflected  in  the  reduced 
pay-roll  of  the  mine.  If  a  wire-mill  has  been  included  in 
the  combination,  an  active  market  tor  wire  will  lead  at  once 


THE  WORLD   ONE   MARKET         191 

to  a  score  or  a  hundred  hands  being  brought  into  that  mill 
from  some  other  department  of  the  works.  Between  every 
subdivision  of  the  business  there  will  be  complete  harmony, 
with  the  result  that  products  will  be  created  and  distributed 
at  lower  cost  than  before. 

By  an  industrial  king  sufficiently  able  the  whole  Union, 
or  even  the  world  itself,  may  be  organised  as  a  single 
market,  whose  wants  may  be  systematically  ascertained, 
and  as  systematically  supplied  from  the  trade  centre  of 
each  territorial  division.  With  the  undisputed  control  of 
such  a  business  credit  is  not  unduly  cheapened,  as  when 
competition  runs  riot,  and  indeed  credit  may  be  totally 
abolished ;  in  either  case  one  of  the  chief  perplexities  of 
ordinary  trade — the  estimation  of  risks — disappears  from 
the  manager's  mind.  By  a  unification  of  control,  backed 
by  abundant  capital,  any  new  improvement  in  machinery 
or  process  is  introduced  at  once  throughout  every  ramifi- 
cation of  the  central  control.  From  first  to  last  it  is  the 
telegraph  which  gives  regimentation  to  such  an  enterprise 
as  this,  so  that  at  last  the  economy  which  electricity  confers 
upon  production  is  paralleled  by  the  saving  it  affords  to 
distribution. 

"  To  him  that  hath  shall  be  given  "  takes  on  a  new  force 
when  industrial  and  financial  might  thus  add  to  the  wings 
of  the  wind  and  the  hot  breath  of  steam  the  lightning 
courser  of  Wheatstone  and  Morse.  We  have  noticed  in  a 
previous  chapter  how  profitable  are  the  consolidations  of 
power  inaugurated  in  the  engine-room  and  machine-shop 
by  the  wand  of  the  electrician  ;  we  now  see  that  his  work 
is  equally  gainful  in  the  empire  of  commerce  and  trade. 
The  streams  of  production  and  of  transportation  at  his  bid- 
ding take  on  all  the  fluidity  of  the  agent  he  employs. 
That  mills,  refineries,  and  factories  have  come  to  the  end  of 
their  consolidations  no  competent  observer  believes.  The 
process,  when   wisely   ordered,   is  as   much   in   the  line  of 


192         TELEGRAPHY— LAND   LINES 

economy  as  the  division  of  labour  in  cotton  manufacture, 
which  came  in  with  Arkwright  and  Watt.  Now  that  to 
the  old  heat-engines  is  added  the  might  conferred  by  the 
new  servant,  electricity,  there  arises  no  such  minor  question 
as  that  of  bringing  to  accord  the  various  tasks  of  the  oper- 
atives under  a  single  roof,  but,  instead,  a  larger  problem, 
nothing  less  than  the  sweeping  unification  of  a  whole  in- 
dustry, represented  though  it  may  be  in  a  thousand  manu- 
facturing concerns.  Here  physics  and  politics  touch 
hands.  How,  we  may  ask,  are  the  powers  of  the  trusts 
and  consolidated  railroads  to  be  restrained  from  tyranny 
and  exaction?  A  pressing  difficulty  of  the  hour,  mainly 
created  by  the  electric  wire,  is  how  the  advantages  of  com- 
plete industrial  organisation  may  be  enjoyed  by  the  public 
without  the  oppressions  of  irresponsible  power. 

The  telegraph  has  another  typical  field  free  from  per- 
plexity, and  in  the  main  one  of  benefit  unalloyed.  Mark 
the  news  columns  of  the  press  as  they  make  the  world  a 
whispering-gallery  and  broaden  the  provincial  view  to  the 
comprehension  of  the  globe.  The  speeches  of  Parliament 
at  Westminster  are  in  the  hands  of  readers  in  New  York 
before  the  speakers  have  gone  to  their  beds.  The  wrongs 
of  the  Armenian  and  the  Finn,  the  explorations  of  old 
Egypt,  and  the  voyages  toward  the  antarctic  pole  are 
discussed  together  with  the  news  of  the  county  and  the 
ward.  The  applause  won  by  an  American  prima  donna  at 
[Mia  in  Paris  or  Dresden,  the  reception  of  the  Ameri- 
can ambassador  as  he  is  greeted  by  Queen  Victoria  at 
Windsor  Castle,  the  progress  toward  confederation  in  the 
colonies  "I  Australasia,  all  become  part  and  parcel  of  the 
gossip  of  tea-tables  in  Wisconsin  and  Vermont  Thus  there 
springs  up  that  comity  of  nations  which  is  so  little  furthered 
by  an  obvious  wooing,  and  that  declines  to  be  promoted 
by  the  arguments  of  the  Peace  Society — for  all  the  pathos 
ol    their  appi 


CHAPTER   XIV 

CABLE    TELEGRAPHY 

ELECTRIC  telegraphy  on  land  has  put  a  vast  distance 
between  itself  and   the  apparatus  of  Chappe,  just  as 
the  scope  and  availability  of  the  French  invention  are  in 
high  contrast  with  the    rude  signal-fires 
of  the   primitive   savage.       As   the   first    Beginnings  at  New 
land  telegraphs  joined  village  to  village,       York  and  Dover- 
and  city   to  city,  the  crossing  of  water 
came  in  as  a  minor  incident ;   the  wires  were  readily  com- 
mitted to  the  bridges  which  spanned  streams  of  moderate 
width.      Where  a  river  or  inlet  was  unbridged,  or  a  chan- 
nel  was   too   wide    for  the   roadway  of   the    engineer,   the 
question  arose,  May  we  lay  an  electric  wire  under  water? 
With  an  ordinary  land   line,  air  serves  as  so  good  a  non- 
conductor and  insulator  that  as  a  rule  cheap  iron  may  be 
employed    for  the  wire  instead   of  expensive  copper.      In 
the   quest   for   non-conductors    suitable    for   immersion    in 
rivers,  channels,  and  the  sea,  obstacles  of  a  stubborn  kind 
were    confronted.       To    overcome    them    demanded    new 
materials,  more  refined  instruments,  and  a  complete  revi- 
sion of  electrical  philosophy. 

As  far  back  as  1795,  Francisco  Salva  had  recommended 
to  the  Academy  of  Sciences,  Barcelona,  the  covering  of 
subaqueous  wires  by  resin,  which  is  both  impenetrable  by 
water  and  a  non-conductor  of  electricity.      Insulators,  in- 

193 


194  CABLE   TELEGRAPHY 

deed,  of  one  kind  and  another,  were  common  enough,  but 
each  of  them  was  defective  in  some  quality  indispensable 
for  success.  Neither  glass  nor  porcelain  is  flexible,  and 
therefore  to  lay  a  continuous  line  of  one  or  the  other  was 
out  of  the  question.  Resin  and  pitch  were  even  more  faulty, 
because  extremely  brittle  and  friable.  What  of  such  fibres 
as  hemp  or  silk,  if  saturated  with  tar,  or  some  other  good 
non-conductor?  For  very  short  distances  under  still  water 
they  served  fairly  well,  but  any  exposure  to  a  rocky  beach 
with  its  chafing  action,  any  rub  by  a  passing  anchor,  was 
fatal  to  them.  What  the  copper  wire  needed  was  a  cover- 
ing impervious  to  water,  unchangeable  in  composition  by 
time,  tough  of  texture,  and  non-conducting  in  the  highest 
degree.  Fortunately  all  these  properties  are  united  in 
gutta-percha  and  in  nothing  else  known  to  art.  Gutta- 
percha is  the  hardened  juice  of  a  large  tree  {Isonandra 
gntta)  common  in  the  Malay  Archipelago;  it  is  tough  and 
strong,  easily  moulded  when  moderately  heated.  In  com- 
parison with  copper  it  is  but  ,,,, .,,,,,,.,,,,',,. r,,,. .,,,>,.  as  con- 
ductive. As  without  gutta-percha  there  could.be  no  ocean 
telegraphy,  it  is  worth  while  recalling  how  it  came  within 
t'he  purview  of  the  electrical  engineer. 

In  1843  Jose  d'Almeida,  a  Portuguese  engineer,  pre- 
sented to  the  Royal  Asiatic  Society,  Loudon,  the  first  speci- 
mens of  gutta-percha  brought  to  Europe.  A  few  months 
later,  Dr.  W.  Montgomerie,  a  surgeon,  gave  other  specimens 
to  the  Society  of  Arts,  of  London,  which  exhibited  them; 
but  it  was  four  years  before  the  chief  characteristic  of  the 
gum  was  recognised.  In  1K47  Mr.  S.  T.  Armstrong  of 
New  York,  during  a  visit  to  London,  inspected  a  pound  or 
two  <>t  gutta-percha,  and  found  it  to  be  twice  as  good  a 
non-conductor  as  glass.  The  next  year,  through  his  in- 
strumentality, a  cable  covered  with  this  new  insulator 
was  laid  between  New  York  and  Jersey  City;  its  sw 
prompted  Mr.  Armstrong  to  that  a  similarly  pro- 


PIONEERING 


195 


tected  cable  be  submerged  between  America  and  Europe. 
Eighteen  years  of  untiring  effort,  impeded  by  the  errors 
inevitable  to  the  pioneer,  stood  between  the  proposal  and 
its  fulfilment.  In  1848  the  Messrs.  Siemens  laid  under 
water  in  the  port  of  Kiel  a  wire  covered  with  seamless  gutta- 
percha, such  as,  beginning  with  1847,  they  had  employed 
for  subterranean  conductors.  This  particular  wire  was  not 
used  for  telegraphy,  but  formed  part  of  a  submarine-mine 
system.  In  1849  Mr.  C.  V.  Walker  laid  an  experimental 
line  in  the  English  Channel ;  he  proved  the  possibility  of 
signalling  for  two  miles  through  a  wire  covered  with  gutta- 
percha, and  so  prepared  the  way  for  a  venture  which  joined 
the  shores  of  France  and  England. 

In  1850  a  cable  25  miles  in  length  was  laid  from  Dover 
to  Calais,  only  to  prove  worthless  from  faulty  insulation, 
and  the  lack  of  armour  against  dragging  anchors  and  fretting 
rocks.  In  1851  the  experiment  was  repeated  with  success. 
The  conductor  now  was  not  a  single  wire  of  copper,  but 


Fig.  58. 
Calais-Dover  cable,  185 1. 

four  wires,  wound  spirally  so  as  to  combine  strength  with 
flexibility ;  these  were  covered  with  gutta-percha  and  sur- 
rounded with  tarred  hemp.  As  a  means  of  imparting 
additional  strength,  ten  iron  wires  were  wound  round  the 
hemp — a  feature  which   has  been  copied  in  every   subse- 


10  CABLE   TELEGRAPHY 

quent  cable  (Fig.  5S).  The  engineers  were  fast  learning 
the  rigorous  conditions  of  submarine  telegraphy;  in  its 
essentials  the  Dover-Calais  line  continues  to  be  the  type 
of  deep-sea  cables  to-day.  The  success  of  the  wire  laid 
across  the  British  Channel  incited  other  ventures  of  the 
kind.  Many  of  them,  through  careless  construction  or 
unskilful  laying,  were  utter  failures.  At  last,  in  1835,  a 
submarine  line  171  miles  in  length  gave  excellent  service, 
as  it  united  Varna  with  Constantinople;  this  was  the  great- 
est length  of  satisfactory  cable  until  the  submergence  of  an 
Atlantic  line. 

In  1854  Cyrus  W.  Field  of  New  York  opened  a  new 
chapter  in  electrical  enterprise  as  he  resolved  to  lay  a  cable 
between  Ireland  and  Newfoundland, 
The  Atlantic  Cable,  along  the  shortest  line  that  joins  Eu- 
rope to  America.  He  chose  Valentia 
and  Heart's  Content,  a  little  more  than  [600  miles  apart, 
as  his  termini,  and  at  once  began  to  enlist  the  co-operation 
of  his  friends.  Although  an  unfaltering  enthusiast  when 
once  his  great  idea  had  possession  of  him,  Mr.  Field  was  a 
man  of  strong  common  sense'.  From  first  to  last  he  went 
upon  well-ascertained  facts;  when  he  failed  he  did  so 
simply  because  other  facts,  which  he  could  not  possibly 
know,  had  to  be  disclosed  by  costly  experience.  Messrs. 
Whitehouse  and  Bright,  electricians  to  his  company,  were 
instructed  to  begin  a  preliminary  series  of  experiments. 
They  united  a  continuous  stretch  of  wires  laid  beneath 
land  and  water  for  a  distance  of  2000  miles,  and  found  that 
through  this  extraordinary  circuit  they  could  transmit  as 
man\-  as  f<uir  signals  per  second.  They  inferred  that  an 
Atlantic  table  would  offer  but  little  more  resistance,  and 
would  then  fore  be  electrically  workable  and  commercially 
lui  rative. 

In  [857  a  cable  was  forthwith  manufactured,  divided  in 
halves,   and    stowed    in   the   holds   of    the    Niagara   of    the 


A    PROJECTOR    AND    HERO  197 

United  States  navy,  and  the  Agamemnon  of  the  British 
fleet.  The  Niagara  sailed  from  Ireland;  the  sister  ship 
proceeded  to  Newfoundland,  and  was  to  meet  her  in  mid- 
ocean.  When  the  Niagara  had  run  out  335  miles  of  her 
cable  it  snapped  under  a  sudden  increase  of  strain  at  the 
paying-out  machinery ;  all  attempts  at  recovery  were  un- 
availing, and  the  work  for  that  year  was  abandoned.  The 
next  year  it  was  resumed,  a  liberal  supply  of  new  cable 
having  been  manufactured  to  replace  the  lost  section,  and 
to  meet  any  fresh  emergency  that  might  arise.  A  new 
plan  of  voyages  was  adopted  :  the  vessels  now  sailed  to- 
gether to  mid-sea,  uniting  there  both  portions  of  the  cable  ; 
then  one  ship  steamed  off  to  Ireland,  the  other  to  the  New- 
foundland coast.  Both  reached  their  destinations  on  the 
same  day,  August  5,  1858,  and,  feeble  and  irregular  though 
it  was,  an  electric  pulse  for  the  first  time  now  bore  a  mes- 
sage from  hemisphere  to  hemisphere.  After  732  despatches 
had  passed  through  the  wire  it  became  silent  forever.  In 
one  of  these  despatches  from  London,  the  War  Office 
countermanded  the  departure  of  two  regiments  about  to 
leave  Canada  for  England,  which  saved  an  outlay  of  about 
$250,000.  This  widely  quoted  fact  demonstrated  with 
telling  effect  the  value  of  cable  telegraphy. 

Now  followed  years  of  struggle  which  would  have  dis- 
mayed any  less  resolute  soul  than  Mr.  Field.      The  Civil 
War  had  broken  out,  with   its  perils  to 
the  Union,  its  alarms  and  anxieties  for    The  Ordeal  of  Failure, 
every  American  heart.     But  while  battle- 
ships and  cruisers  were  patrolling  the  coast  from  Maine  to 
Florida,  and  regiments  were  marching  through  Washington 
on  their  way  to  battle,  there  was  no  remission  of  effort  on 
the  part  of  the  great  projector. 

Indeed,  in  the  misunderstandings  which  grew  out  of  the 
war,  and  that  at  one  time  threatened  international  conflict, 
he   plainly  saw  how  a  cable   would   have   been   a  peace- 


198  CABLE   TELEGRAPHY 

maker.  A  single  word  of  explanation  through  its  wire, 
and  angry  feelings  <>n  both  sides  of  the  ocean  would  have 
been  allayed  at  the  time  of  the  Trent  affair.  In  this 
conviction  he  was  confirmed  by  the  English  press;  the 
London  Times  said:  "We*  nearly  went  to  war  with 
America  because  we  had  no  telegraph  across  the  Atlantic." 
In  1859  the  British  government  had  appointed  a  com- 
mittee of  eminent  engineers  to  inquire  into  the  feasibility 
of  an  Atlantic  telegraph,  with  a  view  to  ascertaining  what 
was  wanting  for  success,  and  with  the  intention  of  adding 
to  its  original  aid  in  case  the  enterprise  were  revived.  In 
July,  1863,  this  committee  presented  a  report  entirely  fa- 
vourable in  its  terms,  affirming  "  that  a  well-insulated 
cable,  properly  protected,  of  suitable  specific  gravity, 
made  with  care,  tested  under  water  throughout  its  pro- 
gress with  the  best-known  apparatus,  and  paid  into  the 
ocean  with  the  most  improved  machinery,  possesses  every 
prospect  of  not  only  being  successfully  laid  in  the  first 
instance,  but  may  reasonably  be  relied  upon  to  continue 
for  many  years  in  an  efficient  state  for  the  transmission  of 
signals." 

Taking  his  stand  upon  this  indorsement,  Mr.  Field  now 
addressed  himself  to  the  task  of  raising  the  large  sum 
needed  to  make  and  lay  a  new  cable  which  should  be  so 
much  better  than  the  old  ones  as  to  reward  its  owners  with 
triumph.  He  found  his  English  friends  willing  to  venture 
the  capital  required,  and  without  further  delay  the  manu- 
facture of  a  new  cable  was  taken  in  hand.  In  every  detail 
the  recommendations  of  the  Scientific  Committee  were 
carried  out  to  the  letter,  so  that  the  cable  of  [865  was  in- 
comparably superior  to  that  of  1S5X.  hirst,  the  central 
copper  wire,  which  was  the  nerve  along  which  the  light- 
ning was  to  run,  was  nearly  three  times  larger  than  before. 
The  old  conductor  was  a  strand  consisting  of  seven  fine 
wins,  six  laid  round  one,  and  weighed  but  107  pounds  to 


COURAGE   UNFAILING  199 

the  mile.  The  new  was  composed  of  the  same  number  of 
wires,  but  weighed  300  pounds  to  the  mile.  It  was  made 
of  the  finest  copper  obtainable.1 

To  secure  insulation,  this  conductor  was  first  embedded 
in  Chatterton's  compound,  a  preparation  impervious  to 
water,  and  then  covered  with  four  layers  of  gutta-percha, 
which  were  laid  on  alternately  with  four  thin  layers  of 
Chatterton's  compound.  The  old  cable  had  but  three 
coatings  of  gutta-percha,  with  nothing  between.  Its  en- 
tire insulation  weighed  but  261  pounds  to  the  mile,  while 
that  of  the  new  weighed  400  pounds.2  The  exterior  wires, 
ten  in  number,  were  of  Bessemer  steel,  each  separately  wound 
in  pitch-soaked  hemp  yarn,  the  shore  ends  specially  pro- 
tected by  36  wires  girdling  the  whole.  Here  was  a  com- 
bination of  the  tenacity  of  steel  with  much  0/  the  flexibility 
of  rope.  The  insulation  of  the  copper  was  so  excellent  as 
to  exceed  by  a  hundredfold  that  of  the  core  of  1858  — 
which,  faulty  though  it  was,  had,  nevertheless,  sufficed 
for  signals.  So  much  inconvenience  and  risk  had  been 
encountered  in  dividing  the  task  of  cable-laying  between 
two  ships  that  this  time  it  was  decided  to  charter  a  sin- 
gle vessel,  the  Great  Eastern,  which,  fortunately,  was  large 
enough  to  accommodate  the  cable  in  an  unbroken  length. 
Foilhommerum  Bay,  about  six  miles  from  Valentia,  was 
selected  as  the  new  Irish  terminus  by  the  company.  Al- 
though the  most  anxious  care  was  exercised  in  every  detail, 
yet,  when  1 1 86  miles  had  been  laid,  the  cable  parted  in 
11,000  feet  of  water,  and  although  thrice  it  was  grappled 

1  The  Gutta-percha  Company  of  London  manufactured  the  copper  core 
and  gutta-percha  covering  of  the  cable  of  1858;  the  outer  sheathing  was 
furnished  by  Glass,  Elliot  &  Co.  of  Greenwich  and  R.  S.  Newall  &  Co.  of 
Birkenhead.  The  cables  of  1865  and  1866  were  manufactured  at  Greenwich 
by  the  Telegraph  Construction  and  Maintenance  Company,  formed  from  the 
Gutta-percha  Company  and  Glass,  Elliot  &  Co. 

2  Henry  M.  Field,  History  of  the  Atlantic  Telegraph.  New  York,  Scrib- 
ner,  1866. 


2oo  CABLE   TELEGRAPHY 

and  brought  toward  the  surface,  thrice  it  slipped  off  the 
grappling  hooks  and  escaped  to  the  ocean  floor. 

Mr.  Field  was  obliged  to  return  to  England  and  face  as 
best  he  might  the  men  whose  capital  lay  at  the  bottom  of 
the  sea — perchance  as  worthless  as  so 
The  Triumph  of  much  Atlantic  ooze.  With  heroic  per- 
courage.  sistence    he    argued    that    all    difficulties 

would  yield  to  a  renewed  attack.  There 
must  be  redoubled  precautions  and  vigilance  never  for  a 
moment  relaxed.  Everything  that  deep-sea  telegraphy 
has  since  accomplished  was  at  that  moment  daylight  clear 
to  his  prophetic  view.  Never  has  there  been  a  more  signal 
example  of  the  power  of  enthusiasm  to  stir  cold-blooded 
men  of  business ;  never  has  there  been  a  more  striking 
illustration  of  how  much  science  may  depend  for  success 
upon  the  intelligence  and  the  courage  of  capital.  Electri- 
cians might  have  gone  on  perfecting  exquisite  apparatus 
for  ocean  telegraphy,  or  indicated  the  weak  points  in  the 
comparatively  rude  machinery  which  made  and  laid  the 
cable,  yet  their  exertions  would  have  been  wasted  if  men 
of  wealth  had  not  responded  to  Mr.  Field's  renewed  appeal 
for  help.  Thrice  these  men  had  invested  largely,  and 
thrice  disaster  had  pursued  their  ventures;  nevertheless 
they  had  faith  surviving  all  misfortunes  for  a  fourth  at- 
tempt. 

In  1866  a  new  company  was  organised,  for  two  objects: 
first,  to  recover  the  cable  lost  the  previous  year  and  com- 
plete it  to  the  American  shore  ;  second,  to  lay  another  be- 
side it  in  a  parallel  course.  The  Great  Eastern  was  again 
put  in  commission,  and  remodelled  in  accordance  with  the 
experience  of  her  preceding  voyage.  This  time  the  ex- 
terior wires  of  the  cable  were  of  galvanised  iron,  the  better 
to  resist  corrosion.  The  paying-out  machinery  was  recon- 
structed and  greatly  improved.     On  July  1;.  [866,  the  huge 

steamer  began  running  out  her  cable  tw  enty-five  miles  north 


TRIUMPH    AT    LAST  201 

of  the  line  struck  out  during  the  expedition  of  1865  ;■  she 
arrived  without  mishap  in  Newfoundland  on  July  27, 
and  electrical  communication  was  re-established  between 
America  and  Europe.  The  steamer  now  returned  to  the 
spot  where  she  had  lost  the  cable  a  few  months  before ; 
after  eighteen  days'  search  it  was  brought  to  the  deck  in 
good  order.  Union  was  effected  with  the  cable  stowed 
in  the  tanks  below,  and  the  prow  of  the  vessel  was  once 
more  turned  to  Newfoundland.  On  September  8  this 
second  cable  was  safely  landed  at  Trinity  Bay.  Misfor- 
tunes now  were  at  an  end  ;  the  courage  of  Mr.  Field  knew 
victory  at  last;  the  highest  honours  of  two  continents  were 
showered  upon  him. 

'T  is  not  the  grapes  of  Canaan  that  repay, 
But  the  high  faith  that  failed  not  by  the  way. 

What  at  first  was  as  much  a  daring  adventure  as  a  busi- 
ness enterprise  has  now  taken  its  place  as  a  task  no  more 
out    of    the    common    than    building    a 
steamship,  or  rearing;  a  cantalever  bridge.  _      lg,_  ™a,y 

r'  °  °  Smoothed  for 

Given    itS    price,    which    will     include    tOO  Successors. 

moderate  a  profit  to  betray  any  expec- 
tation of  failure,  and  a  responsible  firm  will  contract  to  lay 
a  cable  across  the  Pacific  itself.  In  the  Atlantic  lines  the 
uniformly  low  temperature  of  the  ocean  floor  (about  40  C), 
and  the  great  pressure  of  the  superincumbent  sea,  co- 
operate in  effecting  an  enormous  enhancement  both  in  the 
insulation  and  in  the  carrying  capacity  of  the  wire.  As  an 
example  of  recent  work  in  ocean  telegraphy  let  us  glance  at 
the  cable  laid  in  1894,  by  the  Commercial  Cable  Company 
of  New  York.  It  unites  Cape  Canso,  on  the  northeastern 
coast  of  Nova  Scotia,  to  Waterville,  on  the  southwestern 
coast  of  Ireland.  The  central  portion  of  this  cable  much  re- 
sembles that  of  its  predecessor  in  1866.  Its  exterior  armour 
of  steel  wires  is  much  more  elaborate.      The  first  part  of 


202 


CABLE    TELEGRAPHY 


Fig-    59   shows    the    details   of    manufacture:    the   central 

copper  core  is  covered  with  gutta-percha,  then  with  jute, 

upon  which   the  steel  wires  are  spirally   wound,  followed 

by  a  strong  outer  covering.      For  the  greatest  depths  at 

sea,  type  ./  is  employed  for  a  total  length  of  1420  miles; 

the  diameter  of  this  part  of  the  cable  is  seven-eighths  of  an 

inch.      As  the  water  lessens  in  depth  the  sheathing  increases 

.         in  size  until  the  diameter  of  the  cable  becomes 

if-,,  inches  for  152  miles,  as  type  B.     The  cable 

now  undergoes  a  third   enlargement,  and  then 

its   fourth   and   last   proportions   are    presented 

as  it  touches   the   shore,   for  a  distance  of    1^ 


Fig.  59. 
Commercial  cable,  1894. 


miles,  where  type  C  has  a  diameter  of  2i  inches.  The 
weights  of  material  used  in  this  cable  are  :  copper  wire,  495 
tons;  gutta-percha,  315  tons;  jute  yarn,  575  tons;  steel 
wire,  3000  t>  'ii  s  ;  compound  and  tar,  1075  tons;  total,  5460 
tons.  The  telegraph-ship  Faraday^  specially  designed  for 
cable-laying,  accomplished  the  work  without  mishap. 

Electrical  science  owes  much  to  the  Atlantic  cables,  in 
particular  to  the  first  of  them.  At  the  very  beginning  it 
banished  the  idea  that  electricity  as  it  passes  through  metal- 
lic conductors  has  anything  like  its  velocity  through  free 
spate.  It  was  soon  found,  as  Professor  Mendenhall  says, 
"  that  it  is  no  more  correct  to  assign  a  definite  velocity  to 


THE   CABLE   AS   A    TEACHER         203 

electricity  than  to  a  river.      As  the  rate  of  flow  of  a  river  is 

determined  by  the  character  of  its  bed,  its  gradient,  and 

other  circumstances,  so   the  velocity  of 

an  electric   current  is   found   to   depend     Lessons  of  the  Cable. 

on  the  conditions  under  which  the  flow 

takes  place."  1    Mile  for  mile  the  original  Atlantic  cable  had 

twenty  times  the  retarding  effect  of  a  good  aerial  line ;  the 

best  recent  cables  reduce  this  figure  by  nearly  one-half. 

In  an  extreme  form  this  slowing  down  reminds  us  of  the 
obstruction  of  light  as  it  enters  the  atmosphere  of  the  earth, 
of  the  further  impediment  which  the  rays  encounter  if  they 
pass  from  the  air  into  the  sea.  In  the  main  the  causes 
which  hinder  a  pulse  committed  to  a  cable  are  two :  induc- 
tion, and  the  electrostatic  capacity  of  the  wire,  that  is,  the 
capacity  of  the  wire  to  take  up  a  charge  of  its  own,  just  as 
if  it  were  the  metal  of  a  Leyden  jar. 

Let  us  first  consider  induction.  As  a  current  takes  its 
way  through  the  copper  core  it  induces  in  its  surroundings 
a  second  and  opposing  current.  For  this  the  remedy  is 
one  too  costly  to  be  applied.  Were  a  cable  manufactured 
in  a  double  line,  as  in  the  best  telephonic  circuits,  induc- 
tion, with  its  retarding  and  quenching  effects,  would  be 
neutralised.  Here  the  steel-wire  armour  which  encircles 
the  cable  plays  an  unwelcome  part.  Induction  is  always 
proportioned  to  the  conductivity  of  the  mass  in  which 
it  appears ;  as  steel  is  an  excellent  conductor,  the  armour 
of  an  ocean  cable,  close  as  it  is  to  the  copper  core,  has  in- 
duced in  it  a  current  much  stronger,  and  therefore  more 
retarding,  than  if  the  steel  wire  were  absent. 

A  word  now  as  to  the  second  difficulty  in  working  be- 
neath the  sea — that  due  to  the  absorbing  power  of  the 
line  itself.  An  Atlantic  cable,  like  any  other  extended 
conductor,  is  virtually  a  long,  cylindrical  Leyden  jar,  the 
copper  wire  forming  the  inner  coat,  and   its  surroundings 

1  A  Century  of  Electricity.      Boston,  Houghton,  Mifflin  &  Co.,  1887. 


204 


CABLE    TELEGRAPHY 


Fig.  60. 
Condenser. 


the  outer  coat.  Before  a  signal  can  be  received  at  the 
distant  terminus  the  wire  must  first  be  charged.  The 
effect  is  somewhat  like  transmitting  a  signal  through  water 

which  fills  a  rubber  tube;  first  of  all  the  tube  is  distended, 
and  its  compression,  or  secondary  effect,  really  transmits 
the  impulse.  A  remedy  for  this  is  a  condenser  formed  of 
alternate  sheets  of  tin-foil  and  mica, 
C,  connected  with  the  battery,  />',  so 
as  to  balance  the  electric  charge  of 
the  cable  wire  (Fig.  60).  In  the  first 
Atlantic  line  an  impulse  demanded 

X  one-seventh  of  a  second  for  its  jour- 

1  ney.  This  was  reduced  when  Mr. 
Whitehouse  made  the  capital  dis- 
covery that  the  speed  of  a  signal  is 
increased  threefold  when  the  wire 
is  alternately  connected  with  the  zinc  and  copper  poles  of 
the  battery.  Sir  William  Thomson  ascertained  that  these 
successive  pulses  are  most  effective  when  of  proportioned 
lengths.  He  accordingly  devised  an  automatic  trans- 
mitter which  draws  a  duly  perforated  strip  of  paper  under 
a  metallic  spring  connected  with  the  cable.  To-day 
250  to  300  letters  are  sent  per  minute  instead  of  15,  as  at 
first. 

In  many  ways  a  deep-sea  cable  exaggerates  in  an  instruc- 
tive manner  the  phenomena  of  telegraphy  over  long  aerial 
lines.  The  two  ends  of  a  cable  may  be  in  regions  of  widely 
diverse  electrical  potential,  or  pressure,  just  as  the  readings 
of  the  barometer  at  these  two  places  may  differ  much.  If 
a  copper  wire  were  allowed  to  oiler  itself  as  a  gateless 
conductor  it  would  equalise  these'  variations  of  potential 
with  serious  injury  to  itself.  Accordingly  the  ride  is 
adopted  of  working  the  cable  not  directly,  as  if  it  wi 
land  line,  but  indirectly  through  condensers.       As  the  throb 

sent  through  such  apparatus  is  but  momentary,  the  cable 


READING   A   MESSAGE  205 

is  in  no  risk  from  the  strong  currents  which  would  course 
through  it  if  it  were  permitted  to  be  an  open  channel. 

A  serious  error  in  working  the  first  cables  was  in  sup- 
posing that  they  required  strong  currents  as  in  land  lines 
of  considerable  length.  The  very  reverse  is  the  fact.  Mr. 
Charles  Bright,  in  Submarine  Telegraphs,  says : 

Mr.  Latimer  Clark  had  the  conductor  of  the  1865  and  1866 
lines  joined  together  at  the  Newfoundland  end,  thus  forming  an 
unbroken  length  of  3700  miles  in  circuit.  He  then  placed  some 
sulphuric  acid  in  a  very  small  silver  thimble,  with  a  fragment  of 
zinc  weighing  a  grain  or  two.  By  this  primitive  agency  he  suc- 
ceeded in  conveying  signals  through  twice  the  breadth  of  the 
Atlantic  Ocean  in  little  more  than  a  second  of  time  after  making 
contact.  The  deflections  were  not  of  a  dubious  character,  but 
full  and  strong,  from  which  it  was  manifest  that  an  even  smaller 
battery  would  suffice  to  produce  somewhat  similar  effects. 

At  first  in  operating  the  Atlantic  cable  a  mirror  galva- 
nometer was  employed  as  a  receiver.  The  principle  of  this 
receiver  has  often  been  illustrated  by  a  mischievous  boy 
as,  with  a  slight  and  almost  imperceptible  motion  of  his 
hand,  he  has  used  a  bit  of  looking-glass  to  dart  a  ray  of 
reflected   sunlight  across  a  wide   street  or  a  large   room. 


Fig.  61. 

Reflecting  galvanometer. 

L,  lamp  ;  Ar,  moving  spot  of  light  reflected  from  mirror. 

On  the  same  plan,  the  extremely  minute  motion  of  a  gal- 
vanometer, as  it  receives  the  successive  pulsations  of  a 
message,  is  magnified  by  a  weightless  lever  of  light  so  that 


2  of) 


CABLE    TELEGRAPHY 


the  words  are  easily  read  by  an  operator  (Fig.  6l).  This 
beautiful  invention  comes  from  the  hands  of  Sir  William 
Thomson,  who,  more  than  any  other  electrician,  has  made 

ocean  telegraphy  an  established 
success. 

In  another  receiver,  also  of 
his  design,  the  siphon  recorder, 
he  began  by  taking  advantage 
of  the  fact,  observed  long  before 
by  Hose,  that  a  charge  of  elec- 
tricity stimulates  the  flow  of 
a  liquid.  In  its  original  form 
the  ink-well  into  which  the  si- 
phon dipped  was  insulated  and 
charged  to  a  high  voltage  by 
an  influence-machine;  the  ink, 
powerfully  repelled,  was  spurted  from  the  siphon-point  to 
a  moving  strip  of  paper  beneath  (Fig.  62).  It  was  afterward 
found  better  to  use  a  delicate  mechanical  shaker  which 
throws  out  the  ink  in  minute  drops  as  the  cable  current 
gently  sways  the  siphon  back  and  forth  (Fig.  63). 

Minute  as  the  current  is  which  suffices  for  cable  teleg- 
raphy, it  is  essential  that  the  metallic  circuit  be  not  only 
unbroken,  but  un- 
impaired through- 
out. No  part  of  his 
duty  has  more  se- 
verely taxed  the 
resources     of     the 


Fig.  62. 

Siphon  recorder. 


MmrnAAJ^^yv/^A^ 


Fig.  63. 
Siphon  record.     "  Arrived  yesterday." 


electrician  than  to  discover  the  breaks  and  leaks  in  his 
ocean  cables.  (  hie  of  his  methods  is  to  pour  electricity,  as  it 
were,  into  a  broken  wire,  much  as  if  it  were  a  narrow  tube, 
and  estimate  the  length  of  the  wire  (and  consequently  the 
distance  from  shore  to  the  defect  or  break)  by  the  quantity 
oi  current  required  to  fill  it. 


Plate  IV. 


From  photograph  by  London  Stereoscopic  Co. 
LORD    KELVIN. 


CHAPTER   XV 

MULTIPLEX    TELEGRAPHY 

AS  long  as  rays  of  light  were  the  sole  resource  of  the 
JL\^  signaller,  all  that  he  did,  or  could  do,  was  to  send  a 
single  message  at  a  time.  When  telegraphy  passed  from 
light  to  electricity  as  its  agent,  it  became  possible  to  send 
two,  and  afterward  many,  messages  over  a  wire  at  the 
same  instant.      In  Chapter  XII   was  mentioned  the   Gray 


Fig.  64. 
Delany  perforated  message,  "telegraphy." 

harmonic  method  of  making  a  wire  carry  at  the  same 
moment  several  messages  unconfused.  We  noted  also 
one  of  the  inventions  of  Mr.  P.  B.  Delany  for  increasing 
the  capacity  of  a  wire  by  sending  messages  at  a  rate  pos- 

207 


208  MULTIPLEX   TELEGRAPHY 

sible  only  to  fingers  of  brass  and  steel.      In  this  system  a 

despatch    is    first    expressed    in   perforations  by  a  suitable 

machine.    The  strip  of  paper  is  then  rolled 

Two  Messages  Go      between  two  pairs  of  wire  brushes  press- 
Together  in  One         .  111 
Direction.           ing  toward  each  other  above  and  below 

the  paper  (Fig.  64).  The  top  brushes  are 
electrically  one,  and  are  connected  to  the  line  L.  The  bot- 
tom brushes  are  insulated  from  each  other,  one  being  con- 
nected to  the  positive,  the  other  to  the  negative,  pole  of 
the  transmitting  battery,  MB.  This  battery  is  connected 
to  the  earth  at  its  middle.  The  symbols  A,  as  received, 
signify  "  telegraphy,"  a  line  by  itself  meaning  a  dot,  two 
parallel  lines  meaning  a  dash. 

The  same  result,  the  increased  capacity  of  a  line,  has 
been  accomplished  by  various  other  modes;  we  shall  com- 
mence a  brief  review  of  them  by  a  glance  at  the  diplex 
system,  by  which  two  messages  are  sent  in  the  same  direc- 
tion at  the  same  time.  First  of  all,  let  us  note  that  this 
feat  could  be  readily  accomplished  by  simple  mechanical 
means.     Says  Mr.  Charles  L.  Buckingham  : 

A  long  rod  might  be  moved  backward  and  forward  along  its 
axis  by  one  operator  to  ring  a  gong,  while  at  the  same  time  a 
second  operator  could  rotate  the  rod  about  its  axis  to  move  a 
flag  or  turn  the  hand  of  a  dial.  Two  transmissions  could  also  be 
effei  ted  by  the  action  of  water  in  a  single  pipe.  If  a  section  of 
the  pipe  weir  of  glass,  a  valve  placed  within  it  could  be  made 
visibly  to  move  to  and  fro.  and  by  the  forward  and  backward 
(low  thus  caused  to  indicate  signals  of  one  message,  while  signals 
of  a  second  message  could  independently  and  simultaneously  be 
indicated  byincreased  pressure,  shown  by  the  height  of  fluid  in  a 
vertical-pressure  gauge.1 

No  such    schemes   as   these  have  ever  been  practically 

worked  out,  simply  because  they  would  not  be  worth  while. 

Better  and  cheaper  modes  arc  available;   with  electricity  as 

the    agent,   it    becomes   both   easy   and    profitable   to  give   a 

1  Electricity  in  Daily  Life.     New  York,  Scribner,  1891. 


VALUE   OF   DIVERSE   POLARITY      209 

metallic  conductor  two  distinct  impulses.  Let  us  note  the 
means  by  which  one  of  these  impulses  is  sent  forward  and 
received.  A  current  of  say  40  volts  is  caused  to  flow  con- 
tinuously through  the  telegraph  line;  the  armature  at  the 
receiving  end  has  so  strong  a  spring  as  to  be  unmoved  by 
this  current  as  it  excites  an  electromagnet;  to  overcome 
the  spring's  resistance  the  distant  operator  must  use  his 
key  to  introduce  to  the  line  a  current  of  say  100  additional 
volts,  when  the  armature  at  once  responds.  Now  this 
armature  is  of  common  soft  iron  (see  L,  Fig.  55),  as  in  the 
ordinary  telegraph  practice  where  only  one  despatch  at  a 
time  need  be  sent  over  a  wire ;  the  iron  is  indifferent  to  the 
polarity  of  the  electromagnet  which  it  faces.  A  face  of 
north  polarity  in  the  electromagnet  will  induce  south  polar- 
it}-  in  the  soft  iron  opposite  to  it ;  a  face  of  south  polarity 
in  the  electromagnet  will  induce  north  polarity  in  the  soft 
iron  ;  in  either  case  there  is  instant  attraction. 

Currents  may  differ  in  strength ;  they  may  also  differ  in 
the  polarity  they  create  in  electromagnets ;  and  here  the 
inventor  finds  a  second  opportunity  for  his  skill.  Let  us 
observe  a  telegraphic  circuit  of  the  simplest  kind,  actuated 
by  a  cell  consisting  of  a  zinc  and  a  copper  plate  immersed 
in  an  acid  solution  ;  within  its  circuit  is  an  electromagnet. 
At  the  end  of  its  helix,  which  is  joined  to  the  copper  plate, 
a  north  pole  appears  ;  at 
the  other  end,  joined  to 
the  zinc  plate,  a  nega- 
tive   pole    is    presented 

(Fig.  65).     If  we  change  Fig.  65. 

the    connections    of    the      |^P%J~ff  Simple  electromagnet, 

helix,   copper    for    zinc, 

and  zinc  for  copper,  as  we  may  easily  do  with  a  reversing- 
key,  a  north  pole  will  appear  where  we  had  a  south  pole, 
and  vice  versa.  Let  us  now  sketch  the  application  of  this 
principle  to  diplex  telegraphy  (Fig.  66).      Around  the  elec- 


210 


MULTIPLEX    TELEGRAPHY 


tromagnet  Fa  current  is  constantly  flowing,  as  in  the  pre- 
ceding case,  at  40  volts ;  its  effect  is  to  make  a  south  pole 
of  the  upper  face  BS.  The  armature  M  is  a  permanent 
magnet  always  presenting  a  south  pole  to  J',  so  that  be- 
tween the  two  adjacent  faces  there 
$mx      M  is  only  repulsion,  without  telegraphic 


-hi 


3     if 


Fig.  66. 

Signalling  by  reversing 
l><  larity.  In  both  cases 
A  \  is  a  norih  pole, 
AS  a  south  pole. 


effect.  But  the  instant  that  are  versing- 
key  is  depressed  Y  is  changed  to  the 
condition  of  Z\  its  upper  face  becomes 
a  north  pole  and  forthwith  attracts  the 
south  pole  of  J/,  delivering  a  signal. 
Thus  an  operator  who  sends  no  cur- 
rent whatever  into  a 
line,  but  simply  re- 
verses the  direction 
of  the  current  already 
there,  can  send  a  distinct  message  of  his 
own.  The  first  operator  whom  we  de- 
scribed meanwhile  transmits  his  message 
solely  by  increasing  the  strength  of  the 
line  current,  regardless  of  the  polarity 
which  that  current  may  confer  upon  the 
working  face  of  the  distant  electromagnet 
at  the  receiving-station.  Without  the 
slightest  C(  infusion,  the  two  despatches  take 
their  way  together  over  the  same  wire 

As  a  rule  in  telegraphic  practice  it  is 
preferable  that  the  double  capacity  of  a 
wire  should  be  such  as  to  permit  mes- 
sages to  be  sent  from  both  terminals  at 
the  same  time,  rather  than  that  two  de- 
spatches should  proceed  iii  company  from 
one  terminal.  Accordingly,  we  have  du- 
plex systems  which  perform  this  feat,  and  incidentally  ex- 
hibit   the    divisibility   which   electricity  alone    of   all    phases 


Fig.  67. 

I  doable-wound  elec- 
tromagnet. 


A   WIRE'S   DUTY    DOUBLED 


211 


of  energy  offers  the  inventor  in  perfection.      For  brevity's 
sake  but  one  of  these  plans  will  be  described.      Its  success 
depends  on  departing  in  a  new  way  from 
the    simplicity  of   the   common   electro-       Two  Messaees  Go 

1  J  Together  in  Opposite 

magnet.    That  device  has  a  single  coil  of  Directions, 

wire  through  which  a  current  invariably 
excites  the  core  to  magnetism.  Now  if  the  core  is  wound 
with  two  equal  and  separate  coils,  as  shown  in  the  dotted 
and  the  solid  lines  (Fig.  67),  two  equal  and  contrary  currents 
of  electricity  sent  through  their  wires  will  neutralise  each 
other  as  they  course  around  the  iron,  and  hence  will  leave 
it  unmagnetised. 

Such  a  contrivance  is  the  essential  feature  of  an  impor- 
tant form  of  duplex  telegraph  (Fig.  68).  A  and  B  are  two 
stations,  P  and  P'  are  their  receiving-instruments,  and  K 


Un 


Fig.  68. 
Duplex  telegraph. 


and  K'  their  transmitting-keys.  Let  us  imagine  an  operator 
at  A  depressing  his  key.  As  he  does  so  his  battery  current 
is  divided  in  halves;  one  half  goes  into  the  line  running  to 
B ;  the  other  half  enters  a  short  line,  R,  of  equal  resistance 
— which  may  be  a  few  feet  of  fine  German  silver.  A's 
local  electromagnet  P  is  double  wound  (Fig.  67),  and  re- 
ceives into  its  two  coils  both  currents ;  as  they  are  equal 
and  opposed  the  soft  iron  core  is  unmagnetised.  But  at 
the  distant   station  B  the  receiving-electromagnet  P',  as 


212 


Ml'LTIPLEX    TELEGRAPHY 


it  takes  in  one-half  of  the  whole  current  of  the  battery  at 
A,  instantly  attracts  its  armature  and  delivers  its  signals. 
All  this  is  true  if  we  consider  B  as  the  sending  and  A  as 
the  receiving  station.  When  the  sending-key  K'  is  de- 
pressed it  does  not  affect  the  local  electromagnet,  but  the 
distant  instrument  at  A  utters  a  click.  By  this  ingenious 
balancing  of  currents  it  is  thus  feasible  to  send  two  mes- 
sages simultaneously  in  opposite  directions  (Fig.  68). l 

The  duplex  telegraph  in  its  original  forms  suffered  from 
a  serious  defect.  A  telegraph-wire  retains  part  of  each  elec- 
tric impulse  as  an  electrostatic  charge.  This  charge  is  not 
neutralised,  as  it  should  be,  on  an  artificial  line  of  small 
dimensions  from  sheer  insufficiency  of  surface.  In  1872 
Joseph  B.  Stearns  of  Boston  remedied  the  difficulty  by  intro- 

1  A  hydraulic  analogy  of  the  process  is  due  to  Professor  T.  C.  Menden- 
hall,  and  appears  in  his  CentuYy  of  Electricity.  "  Suppose  that  two  1 
living  in  a  city  supplied  with  a  system  oi  water-works  desire  to  establish  tele- 
graphic communication  with  each  other  by  means  of  water.  Connection  be- 
tween the  two  points  is  made  by  means  of  a  small  pipe  of  iron  or  other  suit- 
able material,  into  which  water  from  either  end  can  be  forced  by  opining  a 
stop-cock.      Some   device  will    be   needed  to   show  the   passage   of  the   current, 

and  this  might  he  a  small  inclosed 
water-wheel,  with  a  suitable  index, 
which  is  made  to  turn  by  the  flow 
of  water  around  it.  The  essential 
features  of  such  an  arrangement 
hown  in  tin-  diagram  [Fig.  69]. 
Tin'  two  stations  are  identical.  The 
stream  of  water,  before  entering  the 
box  containing  the  wheel,  is  divided 
into  two  parts,  one  ol  which  flows 
around  the  wheel  in  one  direction 
and  thence  into  the  '  line.'  The  other  passes  round  the  wheel  in  he 
opposite  direction,  and  is  emptied  through  a  narrow  or  (looked  pipe.  Water 
is  admitted  by  turning  the  stop-cock  ./  or  /<,  which  differs  from  the  ordinary 
^as- or  water  cock  in  that  an  additional  opening  is  provided;  so  that  when  the 
cock  is  closed,  as  ,/  is  represented,  thus  ol. stun  tin-  tin-  passage  from  the  si,,  ,  t 

mam,    water   from    above,   alter   having   passe. I    the  wheel,    .an   find    an  easy  exit 

through  the  end  ol  the  cock  to  the  waste,  along  with  that  from  the  1 
pipe  ,/,  ahead)  n  fi  rred  to.  The  latter,  by  being  thin  and  crooked,  off< 
much  n  sistance  to  the  passage  of  the  water  as  does  the  whole  line,  with  the 

wheel  and  stop  <  oik  at  the  distant .  nd.      This  corresponds  to  the  '  artificial  line' 


Fig.  69. 

Hydraulic  model,  duplex  telegraphy. 


Plate  V. 


Copyright  by  J.  1 1'.  White  &■  Co. 
THOMAS   ALVA   EDISON. 


FOUR   MESSAGES   ON    ONE    WIRE    213 

during  condensers  as  already  described  in  Chapter  XIV 
(Fig.  60).  He  thus  perfectly  balanced  the  electrostatic 
charge  of  the  line,  and  duplex  telegraphy  at  once  became 
a  commercial  success  for  both  land  and  ocean  systems. 

By  combining  the  diplex  and  duplex  systems,  Mr.  Edison, 
in    1874,  constructed  the  quadruplex,  which   permits  four 
messages  to  proceed  along  a  wire  at  the 
same  time,  two  from  each  end.1  Four  and  More 

Simultaneous 

Adopting  a  totally  different  principle,  Messages. 

Mr.  P.  B.  Delany  has  brought  to  prac- 
tical success  a  synchronous  telegraph  which  had  engaged 
the  attention  of  other  inventors  for  many  years.      An  ex- 

in  the  duplex  electrical  telegraph.  The  water-wheel,  with  the  divided  current 
flowing  about  it,  is  analogous  to  the  '  differential  relay ' ;  and  the  stop-cock  to 
the  '  key,'  which  in  one  position  allows  the  passage  of  the  current,  and  in 
the  other  affords  free  egress  of  the  current  from  the  other  station  to  the 
'ground.'  The  water  pressure  in  the  street  main  plays  the  part  of  the  electro- 
motive force  in  the  batteries  of  the  electrical  system.  The  operation  of  the 
whole  as  a  duplex  telegraph  will  need  little  explanation.  The  operator  at  A 
transmits  a  signal  by  opening  stop-cock  a.  Water  rushes  in  from  the  main  ; 
and,  since  the  resistances  offered  by  the  two  paths  are  equal,  it  divides  equally 
in  flowing  around  the  wheel.  Equal  currents  being  thus  applied  to  the  oppo- 
site sides  of  the  latter,  it  remains  at  rest.  Half  the  current,  however,  passes 
through  the  line,  and  reaching  the  receiving-instrument  at  B,  passes  around 
the  wheel  there  on  one  side  and  out  through  the  stop-cock  b;  or,  if  a  small  part 
passes  through  the  artificial  line  (and  this  will  always  be  the  case),  it  goes  in 
such  a  way  as  to  aid,  and  not  to  oppose,  the  movement  of  the  wheel.  Thus 
a  signal  will  be  received  at  B  which  will  be  interpreted  as  a  dot  or  a  dash  ac- 
cording as  the  time  of  motion  is  short  or  long.  Of  course,  the  transmission 
of  a  signal  from  B  to  A  is  accomplished  in  precisely  the  same  way.  If  both 
stop-cocks  are  opened  at  the  same  moment,  it  will  easily  be  seen  that  the  two 
equal  opposing  currents  in  the  line  will  prevent  any  actual  flow,  and  at  each 
end  flow  will  take  place  only  into  the  artificial  line,  and  signals  will  be  recorded 
at  both.  It  is  also  clear  that  if  the  operator  at  B,  wishing  to  send  a  dash 
when  only  a  dot  is  to  be  transmitted  from  A,  shall  continue  to  hold  his  key 
open  after  the  other  is  closed,  the  balance  will  be  at  once  established  at  B,  the 
wheel  will  cease  to  move,  and  a  dot  will  be  recorded  ;  while  the  current  from 
B,  now  flowing  through  the  line,  will  maintain  the  motion  at  A  until  a  dash  is 
registered  there." 

1  This  and  much  similar  apparatus  is  described  and  illustrated  in  many  stan- 
dard works,  among  which  may  be  named  American  Telegraphy,  by  William 
Maver,  Jr.     New  York,  William  Maver  &  Co. 


2i4  MULTIPLEX    TELEGRAPHY 

pert  telegrapher  can  make  at  the  most  but  ten  pulsations 
per  second  with  his  key  ;  a  good  aerial  line  of  moderate 
length  can  convey  forty  to  fifty  times  as  many.  For  sim- 
plicity's sake  let  us  suppose  that  the  Delany  system  em- 
ploys four  operators  at  each  end  of  a  wire,  and  that  the 
four  we  shall  observe  at  one  terminal  are  all  sending  mes- 
sages. The  instrument  of  each  is  electrically  connected  by 
a  trailer  to  a  quadrant  of  a  metallic  wheel,  A,  each  instru- 
ment affecting  no  other  than  its  own  particular  and  insu- 
lated quadrant.  The  wheel  rotates  twenty  times  a  second, 
let  us  say,  so  that  even  while  a  single  dot  is  being  formed 
by  an  operator  the  wheel  has  spun  round  a  full  circle  (Fig. 
70).  At  the  receiving-station  is  a  similar  wheel,  B,  which 
is  rotated  at  precisely  the  same  rate  as  its  fellow,  A.     When 


Fig.  70. 

Delany  synchronous  telegraph. 

a  key  at  A  is  on  quadrant  ai,  a  trailer  at  />  will  send  a 
current  through  In  to  a  telegraphic  sounder,  and  so  with 
the  other  three  quadrants.  In  effect  the  wire  has  been 
divided  into  four  parts,  and  four  independent  messages 
take  their  way  through  it  at  the  same  time.  Indeed,  it  is 
easy  to  employ  for  each  operator,  not  a  quadrant,  but  an 
arc  of  300  in  the  circle  traversed  by  the  wheel,  so  that 
twelve  despatches  instead  of  four  may  course  over  the  wire 
simultaneously.  Mr.  Delany's  success  in  this  ingenious 
telegraph  consists  in  the  use  of  correcting  impulses,  -cut 
automatically  into  the  line,  so  as  to  keep  the  trailers  in 
strict  step  one  with  the  other.  His  system  is  extensively 
adopted  in  Great  Britain. 


CHAPTER  XVI 

WIRELESS    TELEGRAPHY 

THUS  far  we  have  directed  our  attention  to  modes  of 
telegraphy  which  depend  upon  conduction,  upon  the 
conveyance    of   a   current    by   an    unbroken    metallic  wire 
suspended  or  laid  between  two  stations. 
In    a   series    of   experiments    interesting      what  may  Follow 
enough,  but  barren  of  utility,  the  water        upon  Ind^tion. 
of  a  canal,  river,  or  bay  has  often  served 
as  a  conductor  for  the  telegraph.      Among  the  electricians 
who  have  thus  impressed  water  into  their  service  was  Pro- 
fessor  Morse.      In    1842    he   sent  a  few  signals  across  the 
channel   from    Castle    Garden,    New   York,    to    Governors 
Island,  a  distance  of  a  mile.      With  much  better  results,  he 
sent  messages,  later  in  the  same  year,  from  one  side  of  the 
canal  at  Washington  to  the  other,  a  distance  of  eighty  feet, 
employing    large    copper    plates    at    each    terminal.      The 
enormous  current   required  to   overcome  the  resistance  of 
water  has  barred  this  method  from  practical  adoption. 

We  pass,  therefore,  to  electrical  communication  as  ef- 
fected by  induction — the  influence  which  one  conductor 
exerts  on  another  through  an  intervening  insulator.  At 
the  outset  we  shall  do  well  to  bear  in  mind  that  magnetic 
phenomena,  which  are  so  closely  akin  to  electrical,  are 
always  inductive.  To  observe  a  common  example  of  mag- 
netic induction,  we  have  only  to  move  a  horseshoe  magnet 

215 


216  WIRELESS   TELEGRAPHY 

in  the  vicinity  of  a  compass  needle,  which  will  instantly 
sway  about  as  if  blown  hither  and  thither  by  a  sharp 
draught  of  air.  This  action  takes  place  if  a  slate,  a  pane  of 
glass,  or  a  shingle  is  interposed  between  the  needle  and  its 
perturber.  There  is  no  known  insulator  for  magnetism, 
and  as  induction  of  this  kind  exerts  itself  perceptibly  for 
many  yards  when  lar^e  masses  of  iron  are  polarised,  the 
derangement  of  compasses  at  sea  from  moving  iron  objects 
aboard  ship,  or  from  ferric  ores  underlying  a  sea-coast,  is  a 
constant  peril  to  the  mariner. 

Electrical  conductors  behave  much  like  magnetic  masses. 
A  current  conveyed  by  a  conductor  induces  a  counter-cur- 
rent in  all  surrounding  bodies,  and  in  a  degree  proportioned 
to  their  conductive  power.  This  effect  is,  of  course,  great- 
est upon  the  bodies  nearest  at  hand,  and  we  have  already 
remarked  its  serious  retarding  effect  in  ocean  telegraphy. 
When  the  original  current  is  of  high  intensity,  it  can  induce 
a  perceptible  current  in  another  wire  at  a  distance  of  sev- 
eral miles.  In  1842  Henry  remarked  that  electric  waxes 
had  this  quality,  but  in  that  earl}-  day  of  electrical  inter- 
pretation the  full  significance  of  the  fact  eluded  him.  In 
the  top  room  of  his  house  he  produced  a  spark  an  inch 
long,  which  induced  currents  in  wires  stretched  in  his  cellar, 
through  two  thick  floors  and  two  rooms  which  came  between. 
Induction  of  this  sort  causes  the  annoyance,  familiar  in 
single  telephonic  circuits,  of  being  obliged  to  overhear  other 
subscribers,  whose  wires  are  often  far  away  from  our  own. 

The  first  practical  use  of  induced  currents  in  telegraphy 

was  when  Air.   Edison,  in    [885,  enabled  the  trains  on  a  line 

of  the  Staten  Island  Railroad  to  be  kept 

Telegraphy  to  a        hi  constant   communication    with   a   tele- 
Moving  Tram.  graphic  wire,  suspended   in  the  ordinary 
way  beside  the  track.      The  roof  of  a  car 
was  of  insulated  metal,  and  every  tap  of  an  operator's  key 
within  the  walls  electrified  the  roof   just   long    enough   to 


ACROSS  THE  BRISTOL  CHANNEL     217 

induce  a  brief  pulse  through  the  telegraphic  circuit.  In 
sending  a  message  to  the  car  this  wire  was,  moment  by 
moment,  electrified,  inducing  a  response  first  in  the  car 
roof,  and  next  in  the  "  sounder  "  beneath  it.  This  remark- 
able apparatus,  afterward  used  on  the  Lehigh  Valley  Rail- 
road, was  discontinued  from  lack  of  commercial  support, 
although  it  would  seem  to  be  advantageous  to  maintain 
such  a  service  on  other  than  commercial  grounds.  In  case 
of  chance  obstructions  on  the  track,  or  other  peril,  to  be 
able  to  communicate  at  any  moment  with  a  train  as  it 
speeds  along  might  mean  safety  instead  of  disaster.  The 
chief  item  in  the  cost  of  this  system  is  the  large  outlay  for 
a  special  telegraphic  wire. 

The  next  electrician  to  employ  induced  currents  in  teleg- 
raphy was  Mr.  (now   Sir)  William  H.  Preece,  the  engineer 
then  at  the  head  of  the  British  telegraph 
system.      Let  one  example  of  his  work    The  Preece  Induction 
be  cited.      In   1896  a  cable  was  laid  be-  Method, 

tween  Lavernock,  near  Cardiff,  on  the 
Bristol  Channel,  and  Flat  Holme,  an  island  three  and  a  third 
miles  off.  As  the  channel  at  this  point  is  a  much-frequented 
route  and  anchor-ground,  the  cable  was  broken  again  and 
again.  As  a  substitute  for  it  Mr.  Preece,  in  1898,  strung 
wires  along  the  opposite  shores,  and  found  that  an  electric 
pulse  sent  through  one  wire  instantly  made  itself  heard  in 
a  telephone  connected  with  the  other.  It  would  seem  that 
in  this  etheric  form  of  telegraphy  the  two  opposite  lines  of 
wire  must  be  each  as  long  as  the  distance  which  separates 
them ;  therefore,  to  communicate  across  the  English  Chan- 
nel from  Dover  to  Calais  would  require  a  line  along  each 
coast  at  least  twenty  miles  in  length.  Where  such  lines 
exist  for  ordinary  telegraphy,  they  might  easily  lend  them- 
selves to  the  Preece  system  of  signalling  in  case  a  sub- 
marine cable  were  to  part. 

Marconi,  adopting    electrostatic  instead    of    electromag- 


218  WIRELESS    TELEGRAPHY 

netic  waves,  has  won  striking  results.      Let  us  note  the  chief 
of  his  forerunners,  as  they  prepared  the  way  for  him.      In 
1864  Maxwell  observed  that  electricity 
s  stem0"'  anc^  n&nt  have  the  same  velocity,  186,400 

miles  a  second,  and  he  formulated  the 
theory  that  electricity  propagates  itself  in  waves  which  differ 
from  those  of  light  only  in  being  longer.  This  was  proved 
to  be  true  by  Hertz,  in  1888,  who  showed  that  where  al- 
ternating currents  of  very  high  frequency  were  set  up  in  an 
open  circuit,  the  energy  might  be  conveyed  entirely  away 
from  the  circuit  into  the  surrounding  space  as  electric 
waves.  His  detector  was  a  nearly  closed  circle  of  wire,  the 
ends  being  soldered  to  metal  balls  almost  in  contact.  With 
this  simple  apparatus  he  demonstrated  that  electric  waxes 
move  with  the  speed  of  light,  and  that  they  can  be  reflected 
and  refracted  precisely  as  if  they  formed  a  visible  beam 
At  a  certain  intensity  of  strain  the  air  insulation  broke 
down,  and  the  air  became  a  conductor.  This  phenomenon 
of  passing  quite  suddenly  from  a  non-conductive  to  a  con- 
ductive state  is,  as  we  shall  duly  see,  also  to  be  noted  when 
air  or  other  gases  are  exposed  to  the  X  ray. 

Now  for  the  effect  of  electric  waxes  such  as  Hertz  pro- 
duced, when  they  impinge  upon  substances  reduced  to 
powder  or  filings.  Conductors,  such  as  the  metals,  are  of 
inestimable  service  to  the  electrician;  of  equal  value  are 
non-conductors,  such  as  glass  and  gutta-percha,  as  they 
Strictly  fence  in  an  electric  stream.  A  third  and  remark- 
able vista  opens  to  experiment  when  it  deals  with  sub- 
stances which,  in  their  normal  state,  are  non- conductive, 
but  which,  agitated  by  an  electric  wave,  instantly  become 
conductive  in  a  high  degree.  As  long  ago  as  [866  Mr.  S. 
A.  Varley  noticed  that  black  lead,  reduced  to  a  loose  dust, 
effectually  intercepted  a  current  from  fifty  Daniell  cells, 
although  the  battery  polo  were  very  near  each  other. 
When  he  increased  the  electric  tension  four-  to  sixfold,  the 


INSTANT   CHANGES   OF   QUALITY    219 

black-lead  particles  at  once  compacted  themselves  so  as  to 
form  a  bridge  of  excellent  conductivity.  On  this  principle 
he  invented  a  lightning-protector  for  electrical  instruments, 
the  incoming  flash  causing  a  tiny  heap  of  carbon  dust  to 
provide  it  with  a  path  through  which  it  could  safely  pass 
to  the  earth.  Professor  Temistocle  Calzecchi  Onesti  of 
Fermo,  in  1885,  in  an  independent  series  of  researches,  dis- 
covered that  a  mass  of  powdered  copper  is  a  non-conductor 
until  an  electric  wave  beats  upon  it ;  then,  in  an  instant, 
the  mass  resolves  itself  into  a  conductor  almost  as  efficient 
as  if  it  were  a  stout,  unbroken  ware.  Professor  Edouard 
Branly  of  Paris,  in  1891,  on  this  principle  devised  a  coherer, 
which  passed  from  resistance  to  invitation  when  subjected 
to  an  electric  impulse  from  afar.  He  enhanced  the  value  of 
his  device  by  the  vital  discovery  that  the  conductivity  be- 
stowed upon  filings  by  electric  discharges  could  be  destroyed 
by  simply  shaking  or  tapping  them  apart. 

In  a  homely  way  the  principle  of  the  coherer  is  often 
illustrated  in  ordinary  telegraphic  practice.  An  operator 
notices  that  his  instrument  is  not  working  well,  and  he  sus- 
pects that  at  some  point  in  his  circuit  there  is  a  defective 
contact.  A  little  dirt,  or  oxide,  or  dampness,  has  come  in 
between  two  metallic  surfaces;  to  be  sure,  they  still  touch 
each  other,  but  not  in  the  firm  and  perfect  way  demanded 
for  his  work.  Accordingly  he  sends  a  powerful  current 
abruptly  into  the  line,  which  clears  its  path  thoroughly, 
brushes  aside  dirt,  oxide,  or  moisture,  and  the  circuit  once 
more  is  as  it  should  be.  In  all  likelihood,  the  coherer  is 
acted  upon  in  the  same  way.  Among  the  physicists  who 
studied  it  in  its  original  form  was  Dr.  Oliver  J.  Lodge.  He 
improved  it  so  much  that,  in  1894,  at  the  Royal  Institution 
in  London,  he  was  able  to  show  it  as  an  electric  eye  that 
registered  the  impact  of  invisible  rays  at  a  distance  of  more 
than  forty  yards.  He  made  bold  to  say  that  this  distance 
might  be  raised  to  half  a  mile. 


220  WIRELESS    TELEGRAPHY 

As  early  as  1879  Professor  I).  E.  Hughes  began  a  series 
of  experiments  in  wireless  telegraphy,  on  much  the  lines 
which  in  other  hands  have  now  reached  commercial  as  well 
as  scientific  success.  Professor  I  lughes  was  the  inventor  of 
the  microphone,  and  that  instrument,  he  declared,  affords 
an  unrivalled  means  of  receiving  wireless  messages,  since 
it  requires  no  tapping  to  restore  its  non-conductivity.  In 
his  researches  this  investigator  was  convinced  that  his  sig- 
nals were  propagated,  not  by  electromagnetic  induction, 
but  by  aerial  electric  waves  spreading  out  from  an  electric 
spark.  Early  in  1  SSo  he  showed  his  apparatus  to  Professor 
Stokes,  who  observed  its  operation  carefully.  Mis  dictum 
was  that  he  saw  nothing  which  could  not  be  explained  by 
known  electromagnetic  effects.  This  erroneous  judgment 
so  discouraged  Professor  Hughes  that  he  desisted  from  fol- 
lowing up  his  experiments,  and  thus,  in  all  probability,  the 
birth  of  the  wireless  telegraph  was  for  several  years  de- 
layed.1 

The  coherer,  as  improved  by  Marconi,  is  a  glass  tube 
about  I  j  inches  long  and  about  r\  of  an  inch  in  internal 
diameter.  The  electrodes  are  inserted  in  this  tube  so  as 
almost  to  touch;  between  them  is  about  ./,,  of  an  inch  filled 
with  a  pinch  of  the  responsive  mixture  which  forms  the  pivot 


__.  . ... 

dHBOS 


Fig.  71. 
Marconi  coherer,  enlarged  view. 

of  the   whole   contrivance.       This   mixture  is  QO  per  cent. 
nickel  filings,  10  per  cent,  hard  silver  filings,  and  a  mere  trace 

of  mercury  ;  the  tube  is  exhausted  of  air  to  within  , ,,,' part 

(Fig.  7 1 ).   How  does  this  trifle  1  >f  metallic  dust  manage  loudly 

'  History  of  the  Wireless  Telegraph,  by  J.  J.  Fahie.  Edinburgh  and  I  on* 
don,  William  Blackwood  .\  Sons;  New  York,  1  >■ »« K 1 ,  Mead  &  (  •>.,  1899. 
Tins  work  is  full  of  interesting  detail,  well  illustrated. 


INSTRUMENTAL   DETAILS 


221 


to  utter  its  signals  through  a  telegraphic  sounder,  or  forcibly 
indent  them  upon  a  moving  strip  of  paper?  Not  directly, 
but  indirectly,  as  the  very  last  refinement  of  initiation.  Let 
us  glance  at  Fig.  72,  which  shows  in  the  simplest  outlines 
a  Marconi  apparatus.  K 
is  a  telegraph-key,  which, 
at  the  transmitting-sta- 
tion,  sends  a  current  from 
B,  a  battery  and  induction 
coil,  to  5"  and  T,  two  brass 
spheres  about  three  inches 
in  diameter,  and  mounted 
a  small  distance  apart. 
The  spark  which,  during 
the  depression  of  the  key 
K,  passes  between  the 
spheres,  sends  forth  the 
electric  waves  which  bear 
the  signal  afar.  C  is  the 
coherer  at  the  receiving- 
station,  mounted  with  me- 
tallic wings,  W  and  IV,  to 
catch  the  electric  waves; 
the  coherer  at  each  end  is 
joined  to  the  metallic  cir- 
cuit of  the  voltaic  cell 
M.       In    this    circuit     or 


Fig.  72. 
Marconi  telegraph  apparatus. 


chain,  the  coherer,  when  unexcited,  forms  a  link  which 
obstructs  the  flow  of  a  current  eager  to  leap  across.  The 
instant  that  an  electric  wave  from  the  sending-station  im- 
pinges upon  the  coherer  it  becomes  conductive ;  the  cur- 
rent instantly  glides  through  it,  and  at  the  same  time  a 
current,  by  means  of  a  relay,  is  sent  through  the  powerful 
voltaic  battery  N,  so  as  to  announce  the  signal  through  an 
ordinary  telegraphic  receiver. 


222  WIRELESS   TELEGRAPHY 

An  electric  impulse,  almost  too  attenuated  for  computa- 
tion, is  here  able  to  effect  such  a  change  in  a  pinch  of  dust 
that  it  becomes  a  free  avenue  instead  of  a  barricade.  Through 
that  avenue  a  powerful  blow  from  a  local  store  of  energy 
makes  itself  heard  and  felt.  No  device  of  the  trigger  class  is 
comparable  with  this  in  delicacy.  An  instant  after  a  signal 
has  taken  its  way  through  the  coherer  a  small  hammer  strikes 
the  tiny  tube,  jarring  its  particles  asunder,  so  that  they  re- 
sume their  normal  state  of  high  resistance.  YVe  may  well  be 
astonished  at  the  sensitiveness  of  the  metallic  filings  to  an 
electric  wave  originating  many  miles  away,  but  let  us  remem- 
ber how  clearly  the  eye  can  see  a  bright  lamp  at  the  same 
distance  as  it  sheds  a  sister  beam.  Thus  far  no  substance 
has  been  discovered  with  a  mechanical  responsiveness  to  so 
feeble  a  ray  of  light;  in  the  world  of  nature  and  art  the 
coherer  stands  alone.  The  electric  waves  employed  by 
Marconi  are  about  four  feet  long,  or  have  a  frequency  of 
about  250,000,000  per  second.  Such  undulations  pass 
readily  through  brick  or  stone  walls,  through  common 
roofs  and  floors — indeed,  through  all  substances  which 
are  non-conductive  to  electric  waves  of  ordinary  length. 
Were  the  energy  of  a  Marconi  sending-instrument  applied 
to  an  arc-lamp,  it  would  generate  a  beam  of  a  thousand 
candle-power.  We  have  thus  a  means  of  comparing  the 
sensitiveness  of  the  retina  to  light  with  the  responsiveness 
of  the  Marconi  coherer  to  electric  waves,  after  both  radia- 
tions have  undergone  a  journey  of  miles. 

An  essential  feature  of  this  method  of  etheric  telegraphy, 
due  to  Marconi  himself,  is  the  suspension  of  a  perpendicular 
wire  at  each  terminus,  its  length  twenty  feet  for  stations 
a  mile  apart,  forty  feel  for  four  miles,  and  so  on,  the  tele- 
graphic distance  increasing  as  the  square  of  the  length  of 
suspended  wire.  In  the  Kingstown  regatta,  July,  1898, 
Mail 'mi  sent  from  a  yacht  under  full  steam  a  report  to 
the  shore  without  the  loss  of  a  moment  from  start  to  finish. 


LIGHT   AND   SOUND   DISMISSED      223 

This  feat  was  repeated  during  the  protracted  contest  be- 
tween the  Columbia  and  the  Shamrock  yachts  in  New 
York  Bay,  October,  1899.  On  March  28,  1899,  Marconi 
signals  put  Wimereux,  two  miles  north  of  Boulogne,  in 
communication  with  the  South  Foreland  Lighthouse,  thirty- 
two  miles  off.1  In  August,  1899,  during  the  manoeuvres  of 
the  British  navy,  similar  messages  were  sent  as  far  as 
eighty  miles.  It  was  clearly  demonstrated  that  a  new 
power  had  been  placed  in  the  hands  of  a  naval  commander. 
"  A  touch  on  a  button  in  a  flagship  is  all  that  is  now 
needed  to  initiate  every  tactical  evolution  in  a  fleet,  and 
insure  an  almost  automatic  precision  in  the  resulting  move- 
ments of  the  ships.  The  flashing  lantern  is  superseded  at 
night,  flags  and  the  semaphore  by  day,  or,  if  these  are  re- 
tained, it  is  for  services  purely  auxiliary.  The  hideous 
and  bewildering  shrieks  of  the  steam-siren  need  no  longer 
be  heard  in  a  fog,  and  the  uncertain  system  of  gun  signals 
will  soon  become  a  thing  of  the  past."  The  interest  of  the 
naval  and  military  strategist  in  the  Marconi  apparatus  ex- 
tends far  beyond  its  communication  of  intelligence.      Any 

1  The  value  of  -wireless  telegraphy  in  relation  to  disasters  at  sea  was  proved 
in  a  remarkable  way  yesterday  morning.  While  the  Channel  was  enveloped 
in  a  dense  fog,  which  had  lasted  throughout  the  greater  part  of  the  night,  the 
East  Goodwin  Light-ship  had  a  very  narrow  escape  from  sinking  at  her 
moorings  by  being  run  into  by  the  steamship  R.  F.  Matthews,  1964  tons  gross 
burden,  of  London,  outward  bound  from  the  Thames.  The  East  Goodwin 
Lightship  is  one  of  four  such  vessels  marking  the  Goodwin  Sands,  and,  curi- 
ously enough,  it  happens  to  be  the  one  ship  which  has  been  fitted  with  Signor 
Marconi's  installation  for  wireless  telegraphy.  The  vessel  was  moored  about 
twelve  miles  to  the  northeast  of  the  South  Foreland  Lighthouse  (where  there  is 
another  wireless-telegraphy  installation),  and  she  is  about  ten  miles  from  the 
shore,  being  directly  opposite  Deal.  The  information  regarding  the  collision 
was  at  once  communicated  by  wireless  telegraphy  from  the  disabled  light-ship 
to  the  South  Foreland  Lighthouse,  where  Mr.  Bullock,  assistant  to  Signor 
Marconi,  received  the  following  message  •  "  We  have  just  been  run  into  by  the 
steamer  A\  F.  Matthews  of  London.  Steamship  is  standing  by  us.  Our  bows 
very  badly  damaged."  Mr.  Bullock  immediately  forwarded  this  information 
to  the  Trinity  House  authorities  at  Ramsgate.  —  Times,  April  29,  1899. 


224  WIRELESS    TELEGRAPHY 

electrical  appliance  whatever  may  be  set  in  motion  by  the 
same  wave  that  actuates  a  telegraphic  sounder.  A  fuse 
may  be  ignited,  or  a  motor  started  and  directed,  by  appara- 
tus connected  with  the  coherer,  for  all  its  minuteness.  Mr. 
Walter  Jamieson  and  Mr.  John  Trotter  have  devised  means 
for  the  direction  of  torpedoes  by  ether  waxes,  such  as  those 
set  at  work  in  the  wireless  telegraph.  Two  rods  projecting 
above  the  surface  of  the  water  receive  the  waxes,  and  are 
in  circuit  with  a  coherer  and  a  relay.  At  the  will  of  the 
distant  operator  a  solenoid  draws  in  an  iron  core  either  to 
the  right  or  to  the  left,  moving  the  helm  accordingly. 

As  the  nexvs  of  the  success  of  the  Marconi  telegraph 
made  its  xvay  to  the  London  Stock  Exchange  there  was  a 
fall  in  the  shares  of  cable  companies.  The  fear  of  rivalry 
from  the  new  invention  was  baseless.  As  but  15  words 
a  minute  are  transmissible  by  the  Marconi  system,  it  evi- 
dently does  not  compete  with  a  cable,  such  as  that  between 
France  and  England,  which  can  transmit  2500  words  a 
minute  without  difficulty.  The  Marconi  telegraph  conies 
less  as  a  competitor  to  old  systems  than  as  a  mode  of 
communication  which  creates  a  field  of  its  own.  We  have 
seen  what  it  may  accomplish  in  war,  far  outdoing  any  feat 
possible  to  any  other  apparatus,  acoustic,  luminous,  or  elec- 
trical. In  quite  as  striking  fashion  does  it  break  nexv 
ground  in  the  service  of  commerce  and  trade.  It  enables 
lighthouses  continually  to  spell  their  names,  so  that  re- 
ceivers  aboard  ship  may  give  the  steersmen  their  bearings 
even  in  storm  and  fog.  In  the  crowded  condition  of  the 
steamship  "lanes"  which  cross  the  Atlantic,  a  priceless 
security  against  collision  is  afforded  the  man  at  the  helm. 
On    November    15,    [899,    Marconi   telegraphed   from   the 

American  liner  St.  Paul  to  the  Needles,  sixty-- ix  nautical 
miles  away.  In  many  cases  the  telegraphic  business  to  an 
island  is  too  small  to  warrant  the  laying  of  a  cable;  hence 
we  find  that    Trinidad  and   fobago  are  to  be  jomed  by  the 


THROUGH  A    CORNER  225 

wireless  system,  as  also  five  islands  of  the  Hawaiian  group, 
eight  to  sixty-one  miles  apart. 

A  weak  point  in  the  first  Marconi  apparatus  was  that  any- 
body within  the  working  radius  of  the  sending-instrument 
could  read  its  message.  To  modify  this  objection  secret 
codes  were  at  times  employed,  as  in  commerce  and  diplo- 
macy. A  complete  deliverance  from  this  difficulty  is  prom- 
ised in  attuning  a  transmitter  and  a  receiver  to  the  same 
note,  so  that  one  receiver,  and  no  other,  shall  respond  to  a 
particular  frequency  of  impulses.  The  experiments  which 
indicate  success  in  this  vital  particular  have  been  conducted 
by  Professor  Lodge. 

When  electricians,  twenty  years  ago,  committed  energy 
to  a  wire  and  thus  enabled  it  to  go  round  a  corner,  they 
felt  that  they  had  done  well.  The  Hertz  waves  sent 
abroad  by  Marconi  ask  no  wire,  as  they  find  their  way,  not 
round  a  corner,  but  through  a  corner.  On  May  1,  1899,  a 
party  of  French  officers  on  board  the  Ibis  at  Sangatte,  near 
Calais,  spoke  to  Wimereux  by  means  of  a  Marconi  appara- 
tus, with  Cape  Grisnez,  a  lofty  promontory,  intervening.  In 
ascertaining  how  much  the  earth  and  the  sea  may  obstruct 
the  waves  of  Hertz  there  is  a  broad  and  fruitful  field  for  in- 
vestigation. "  It  may  be,"  says  Professor  John  Trowbridge, 
"that  such  long  electrical  waves  roll  around  the  surface 
of  such  obstructions  very  much  as  waves  of  sound  and  of 
water  would  do." 

It  is  singular  how  discoveries  sometimes  arrive  abreast 
of  each  other  so  as  to  render  mutual  aid,  or  supply  a  press- 
ing  want  almost  as 

soon  as  it  is  felt.   The    -W\/\/\/\a~  -aAAAAa^ 

coherer  in  its  present  FlG 

form   IS   actuated    by  Discontinuous  electric  waves, 

waves    of    compara- 
tively low  frequency,  which  rise  from  zero  to  full  height  in 
extremely  brief  periods,  and  are  separated  by  periods  de- 


226 


WIRELESS    TELEGRAPHY 


\& 


\ 


Fig.  74. 
Wehnelt  interrupter. 


cidedly  longer  (Fig.  73).  What  is  needed  is  a  plan  by  which 
the  waves  may  flow  either  continuously  or  so  near  together 
that  they  may  lend  themselves  to  attuning.  Dr.  Wehnelt, by 
an  extraordinary  discover}-,  may,  in  all  likelihood,  provide 
the  lacking  device  in  the  form  of  his  inter- 
rupter, which  breaks  an  electric  circuit  as 
often  as  two  thousand  times  a  second. 
The  means  for  this  amazing  performance 
are  simplicity  itself  (Fig.  74).  A  jar,  a, 
containing  a  solution  of  sulphuric  acid  has 
two  electrodes  immersed  in  it ;  one  of  them 
is  a  lead  plate  of  large  surface,  b  ;  the  ot  her 
is  a  small  platinum  wire  which  protrudes 
from  a  glass  tube,  d.  A  current  passing 
through  the  cell  between  the  two  metals 
at  c  is  interrupted,  in  ordinary  cases  five  hundred  times  a 
second,  and  in  extreme  cases  four  times  as  often,  by  bub- 
bles of  gas  given  off  from  the  wire  instant  by  instant.1 

The  adoption  of  electricity  in  its  diverse  phases,  in  lieu 
of  visible  signals  as  a  communicator  of  intelligence,  is  one 
of  the  distinctive  leaps  of  human   prog- 
The  Grasp  of  Eiec-      ress.      A  hundred  years  ago  the  Chappe 
trie  Telegraphy.        telegraph     could     transmit    per    minute 
but    three    signals  between    one    station 
and  another,  for  a  distance  of  ten  miles.     To-day  a  single 
wire  joining  Paris  and  Toulon,  475  miles  apart,  can  easily 
bear  6000  signals  a  minute,  ami  this   in   perfect   indepen- 
dence of  daylight  or  good    weather.      Because  a  metallic 
wire  can  thus  cany  many  more  messages  than  one  opera- 


1  This  niri'Mis  contrivance  affords  a  ready  means  of  producing  the  sparks 
Deeded  t"i  gas-engines;  it  is  the  simplest  means  ol  converting  a  continuous 
into  an  alternating  current,  and  hence  offers  notable  service  to  jewellers  and 
■  ■til' 1  artisans  who  wish  a  welding  current  <>f  small  volume.  In  radiography 
■  edu<  ''I  tli>-  time  of  1  xposure  by  as  much  as  three  fourths,  besides  i;i\  'ing 
remarkably  stea.lv  images  on  the  fluorescent  screen.  — Electrical  World  and 
neer,  May  20,  1 s 


GRASP  OF  ELECTRIC  TELEGRAPHY     227 

tor  can  transmit,  we  find  in  the  field  a  wide  variety  of 
multiple  systems  of  telegraphy,  none  of  them  possible 
before  the  electric  age.  In  the  harmonic  method  the  wire 
becomes  in  effect  a  medium  for  the  conveyance  of  musical 
tones,  each  of  them  unheard  except  through  a  sympathetic 
reed.  In  a  second  plan  the  dual  polarity  of  an  electric 
current  enables  it  to  carry  two  messages  as  clearly  as  one. 
In  yet  another  mode  a  response  is  given  only  to  an  impulse 
of  more  than  ordinary  force,  as  if  the  instrument  slept 
under  any  knock  but  a  heavy  one.  By  another  and  totally 
different  scheme  the  current  is  so  subdivided  that  a  dozen 
despatches  may  be  borne  abreast,  this  by  the  synchronous 
rotation  at  high  speed  of  two  wheels  hundreds  of  miles 
apart.  As  the  latest  and  perhaps  the  last  term  in  the 
series,  we  have  a  telegraph  which  dispenses  with  connect- 
ing wires  altogether,  and  takes  its  way  like  a  pencil  of 
light  through  the  ether  of  space.  All  these  methods, 
diverse  as  they  are,  have  one  limitation — their  messages 
must  take  the  form  of  an  arbitrary  code  of  signals.  "  A  " 
must  be  a  short  tap  and  a  long  one,  and  so  on  throughout 
the  alphabet.  It  remained  for  the  telephone  to  banish  this 
one  restriction,  and  so  marry  sound  and  electricity  that  a 
metallic  thread  carries  electrical  pulses  which  are  virtually 
those  of  every  tone  and  cadence  of  the  human  voice. 


CHAPTER    XVII 

THE   Ti  1  I  llh  iNE 

IX  the  history  of  invention  it  has  often  appeared  that  a 
feat  has  been  really  much  more  simple  than  it  seemed 
to  be  at  first  view.      More  than  one  good  engineer  at  the 
inception  of  railroading  thought  that  the 
„ r .    ..    .„     rails  and  the  wheel-  must  be  toothed  if 

From  Complexity  to 

Simplicity.  they   were    to    be   trusted    around   sharp 

curves  and  up  steep  gradients.  And  so 
it  was  with  the  problem  of  telephony.  Its  pioneers  saw 
looming  between  the  domain  of  electricity  and  the  world 
of  sound  nothing  short  of  a  mountain  of  difficulty.  As 
they  ascended  its  heights  they  beheld  at  its  very  base  a 
straight  and  easy  mode  of  translating  the  pulses  of  the 
voice  into  equal  throbs  of  electricity. 

The  Inst  explorer  here  was  Dr.  Page.  In  [837  he  no- 
ticed that  a  musical  sound  issued  from  the  core  of  an 
electromagnet  whenever  contact  was  made  or  broken  be- 
tween its  coil  and  a  battery.1  His  experiments  were 
repeated  and  extended  by  many  inquirers  at  home  and 
abroad,  who  saw  a  prospeel  of  thus  transmitting  music  by 
telegraph  not  less  easily  than  the  dots  and  dashes  of  a 
common    message.       Of    these    men    the    most    notable    was 

Johann   Philipp   Reis  of   Friedrichsdorf,  in   Germany.      In 

1  American  Journal  of  Science.  First  series,  VoL  XXXII,  p.  369,  and 
Vol.  XXXIII,  p.  354. 

226 


AN    INHERITED    INTEREST  229 

1 86 1  he  devised  an  electrical  instrument  which  transmitted 
not  only  music  but  also  vowel  sounds,  although  not  in  a 
sufficiently  clear  and  reliable  way  to  be  accounted  a  suc- 
cess. The  goal  wThich  Reis  so  narrowly  missed  took  on  a 
new  accessibility  when  Helmholtz  completed  his  masterly 
analysis  of  vowel  sounds.  With  nothing  more  than  a  hol- 
low sphere  he  resolved  a,  e,  i,  o,  and  u  into  their  constituent 
musical  elements,  much  as  Newton  with  a  simple  prism  had 
divided  a  beam  of  white  light  into  its  component  coloured 
rays.  Armed  with  a  series  of  tuning-forks,  actuated  by 
electricity,  he  proceeded  to  prove  his  analysis  true.  Unit- 
ing a  series  of  fundamental  tones,  he  reproduced  the  vowels 
with  unmistakable  clearness. 

The  possibility  that  articulate  speech  might  be  committed 
to  an  electric  wire  and  recovered  from  it  now  plainly  pic- 
tured itself  in  the  imagination  of  three  great  inventors — 
Elisha  Gray,  Alexander  Graham  Bell,  and  Thomas  Alva 
Edison.  Inasmuch  as  Bell,  by  his  fortunate  choice  of  an 
undulatory  current,  has  given  the  world  the  best  instru- 
ment, it  may  be  sufficient  to  confine  attention  to  the  steps 
by  which  he  arrived  at  his  victory.  The  original  impulse 
in  his  work  came  from  his  distinguished  father,  Professor 
Alexander  Melville  Bell,  whose  life  has  been  devoted  to  a 
critical  study  of  articulate  speech,  and  who  has  invented 
for  articulate  sounds  an  alphabet  of  forty-four  symbols, 
which  is  known  as  "visible  speech."  This  veteran  of 
science,  writing  from  his  residence  in  Washington,  gives 
us,  under  the  date  of  November  14,  1899,  this  noteworthy 
account  of  the  incitements  which  ended  in  the  telephone : 
"  In  the  boyhood  of  my  three  sons  I  took  them  to  see  the 
speaking-machine  constructed  by  Herr  Faber,  and  we  were 
all  greatly  interested  in  it  professionally.  To  test  their 
theoretical  knowledge,  and  their  mechanical  ingenuity,  I 
offered  a  prize  to  the  one  who  should  produce  the  best 
results  in  imitation  of  speech  by  mechanical  means.     All, 


230  THE   TELEPHONE 

of  course,  set  to  work,  but  nothing  of  startling  novelty  was 
devised.  The  scheme  of  my  second  son,  A.  G.  Bell,  was, 
however,  the  best.  This  contest — as  well  as  the  whole  course 
of  the  boys'  education — directed  their  minds  to  the  subject, 
until  the  sole  survivor  of  the  lads  came  to  the  conclusion 
that  imitative  mechanism  might  be  dispensed  with,  and 
merely  the  vibrations  of  speech  be  transmitted  to  an  elec- 
tric wire.  This  was  entirely  his  own  idea.  He  illustrated 
it  to  me  by  diagrams,  and  sketched  out  the  whole  plan  of 
central-office  communication,  long  before  anything  had  been 
done  for  the  practical  realisation  of  the  idea.  I  can  claim 
nothing  in  the  telephone  but  the  impulse  which  led  to  the 
invention." 

Soon  after  the  telephone  had  proved  itself  to  be  thor- 
oughly successful,  its  inventor  was  invited  to  deliver  a 
lecture,  on  October  31,  1877,  before  the  Society  of  Tele- 
graph Engineers,  in  London.    He  said  : 

When  we  sing  into  a  piano,  certain  of  the  strings  of  the  instru- 
ment are  set  in  vibration  sympathetically  by  the  action  of  the 
voice  with  different  degrees  of  amplitude,  and  a  sound,  which  is 
an  approximation  to  the  vowel  uttered,  is  produced  from  the 
piano.  Theory  shows  that,  had  a  piano  a  very  much  larger  num- 
ber of  strings  to  the  octave,  the  vowel  sounds  would  he  perfectly 
reproduced.  My  idea  was  to  use  a  harp-like  apparatus,  ami 
throw  certain  of  the  rods  into  vibration  by  sounds  of  different 
amplitudes.  At  the  other  end  of  the  circuit  the  corresponding 
rods  of  a  second  harp  would  vibrate  with  their  proper  relations  of 
.  and  the  timbre  of  the  sound  would  he  reproduced.  The 
expense  of  Constructing  the  apparatus  deterred  me  from  making 
the  attempt,  and  I  sought  to  simplify  the  apparatus  before  having 
it  made.1 

As  the  result  of  along  series  of  experiments,  he  discov- 
ered that  the  complexity  of  the  diverse  rods  of  a  harp  was 
quite  unnecessary  ;  a  piece  of  clock-spring,  about  the  size 
and  shape  of  his  thumb-nail,  glued  to  the  centre  of  a  mem- 
brane of  gold-beaters'  skin,  was  adequate  to  receiving  every 

1   The  Speaking  Tile  plume,  by  G.  15.  Prescott.     -New  York,  Appleton,  1 


AT    PHILADELPHIA    IN    1876        231 

tone  of  the  voice,  while  a  second  apparatus  of  identical 
simplicity  repeated  the  words  at  the  distant  end  of  a  wire. 
It  took  a  long  and  roundabout  search  to  find  that  the  best 
path  for  the  electric  transmission  of  speech  is  the  short  and 
direct  course  of  talking  to  one  simple  disc  and  listening  at 
another. 

When  Professor  Bell  exhibited  his  telephone  at  Philadel- 
phia, in  1876,  nothing  seemed  less  probable  than  that  he 
had  entered  upon  a  serious  rivalry  with 
the  telegraph.    The  tones  of  the  little  disc     a  carbon  Button  Re- 
were  lisping  and  feeble  ;  it  was  sometimes         »nf°rces  sound, 
hard  to  convince  its  auditors  that  they 
were  hearing  anything  else  than  sounds  which  had  set  up 
no  partnership  with  electricity,  and  were  pulsing  through 
the  wire  precisely  as  they  might  through  the  string  of  that 
common         acoustic 


toy,  the  lovers'  tele- 
graph (Fig.  75).  The 
week-day    noises    of  Fig.  75. 

the  Exhibition  build-      Lovers'  telegraph.      Two  bits  of  tubing  have 
,    .    ,  each  an  end  closed  bv  a  membrane  ;  between 

ing     so     completely        ..         t        ,  .         ■ 

0  r  j  th.e  centres  of  the  membranes  a  string  conveys 

drowned       its       tones  speech  for  several  hundred  feet. 

that  only  with  Sab- 
bath quiet  were  its  messages  distinct  to  the  ear.  At  first 
Professor  Bell  used  the  same  instrument  in  speaking  and  in 
listening.  To-day  the  instrument  into  which  one  speaks,  the 
transmitter,  differs  in  essential  details  from  the  receiver  at 
which  one  listens.  The  telephone  as  it  left  the  hands  of  its 
inventor  was  nearly  perfect  in  its  task  of  reproducing  speech 
from  minute  currents  as  they  arrived  from  a  distance.  For 
the  work  of  transforming  the  energy  of  the  voice  into  elec- 
tric pulses  the  transmitter  was  imperfect,  and  could  not  have 
been  a  commercial  success  but  for  its  improvement  by 
Hughes,  Blake,  and  Edison.  All  three  added  an  element 
indispensable  in  other  branches  of  the  electric  art,  namely, 


t) 


232  THE    TELEPHONE 

carbon,  which  here  displays  a  property  of  the  utmost 
value. 

The  electrical  resistance  of  a  small  mass  of  carbon  re- 
sponds in  the  most  sensitive  way  to  the  slightest  variation 
in  the  mechanical  pressure  to  which  it  may  be  exp 
(Fig.  76).  Mount  a  small  upright  stick  of  carbon  on  pivots, 
which  it  lightly  touches,  send  an  electric  current  through 
it,  and  a  feather  stroke  upon  the  car- 
bon so  lifts  and  lowers  its  resistance 
that  in  a  connected  telephone  one 
hears  a  succession  of  loud  raps.  It 
must    not    be    supposed    that    these 

raps  are  the  magnified  sounds  of  the 
Fig.  76.  r  .       5 

...       .  feather    as    it   moves   along.     '1  hey 

Microphone.  °  J 

would  be  heard  just  as  distinctly  if 

the  feather  and  the  carbon  were  inclosed  in  a  vacuum  and  so 
cushioned  as  in  themselves  to  be  perfectly  silent.  It  is  the 
changing  resistance  of  the  stick  that  gives  rise  to  the  sounds, 
a  phenomenon  which  reappears,  as  we  shall  presently  ob- 
serve, in  the  photophone.  In  the  improved  forms  of  tele- 
phone a  carbon  button  is  placed  in  a  local  electric  circuit, 
and  under  the  slight  variations  of  pressure  exerted  by  the 
sound-waves  of  speech  this  button  undergoes  wide  fluctua- 
tions in  its  electric  resistance,  so  that  electric  pulses  much 
intensified  are  sent  into  the  line.  In  its  original  form  the 
telephone  did  little  else  than  utter  an  uneven  whisper,  and 
Professor  Hell  intended  to  use  it  solely  in  lecture-room  illus- 
trations. A  sphere  of  commercial  acceptance  as  wide  as  the 
world  followed  the  moment  that  the  carbon  microphone 
brought  a  muffled  lisp  to  full  and  clear  audibility. 

Two  magnetic  telephones  of  rough-and-ready  manufac- 
ture, with  a  hundred  feet  of  wire,  may  be  made  wholesale 
for  a  dollar;  yet  in  their  simplicity  of  construction,  united 
to  complexity  <>f  working,  they  arc  among  tin-  most  re- 
markable- creations  of  the  age.     Fig.  ~,i  shows  the  anatomy 


ITS   ANATOMY 


233 


of  such  instruments.  D  is  the  thin  iron  disc  against  which 
one  speaks  as  it  all  but  touches  P,  the  pole  of  the  permanent 
steel  magnet  contained  in  the  case  M.  As  the  disc  is 
urged  and  withdrawn  by  the  pulses  of  the  voice  it  comes 
into  fluctuating  degrees  of  approach  to  P;    this  causes  the 


Fig.  77. 
Telephone  dissected. 

magnetism  of  P  to  vary  in  sympathy.  Whenever  a  magnet 
inclosed  in  a  coil  of  wire,  C,  thus  varies  in  strength,  minute 
currents  of  electricity  are  created  in  the  coil ;  such  currents 
accordingly  pass  to  the  line-wires,  IV,  W.  The  electric 
undulations  arrive  at  a  receiving-instrument  which,  for 
simplicity's  sake,  we  shall  assume  to  be  identical  with  the 
sending-apparatus.  They  circulate  round  a  steel  magnet 
whose  attractive  power  upon  a  disc  they  modify  from  in- 
stant to  instant.  Because  the  receiving-disc  in  this  indirect 
manner  thus  vibrates  in  sympathy  with  the  transmitting- 
disc,  the  speaker's  words  arrive  with  characteristic  though 
weakened  tones  at  B 


Fig.  78. 
Telephonic  circuit. 


as  sent  from  A  (Fig. 
78).  Surely  there  is 
nothing  in  electric 
art  more  marvellous 
than   this  persistence 

of  infinitesimal  waves  in  all  their  sinuosities,  through  re- 
peated transfer  and  transformation.  That  matter  may  be 
impressed  by  forces  next  to  nothing  in  quantity,  and  that 
these  impressions  may  be  transmitted  for  miles  and  recov- 


234  THE   TELEPHONE 

ered  with  no  loss  of  character,  are  among  the  most  wonder- 
ful facts  of  nature,  and  as  serviceable  as  they  are  wonderful. 

The  telephone  is  not  simply  a  rival  to  the  telegraph  in 

many  fields:  it  cultivates  a  vast  domain  of  its  own.     The 

telegraph  suffers  from  a  serious   restric- 

Simpier  than  the  tion  in  that  it  speaks  a  language  not 
Telegraph.  understood   by    the   people.       When   we 

send  a  telegram  we  must  go  to  a  tele- 
graph office  in  quest  of  an  operator  skilled  in  translating  a 
message  into  the  long  and  short  taps  of  the  Morse  code  of 
signals.  We  are  somewhat  in  the  case  of  the  Neapolitan 
who  cannot  write,  and  who  must  seek  a  professional  scribe 
to  assist  him  in  communications,  however  confidential. 
From  this  dependence  the  telephone  proclaims  emancipa- 
tion ;  it  strikes  a  dominant  note  of  modern  invention  — 
immediacy  and  simplicity.  Ousting  the  middleman  as  an 
intruder,  it  enables  anybody  who  can  ring  a  bell,  speak,  and 
listen  to  be  master  of  electric  communication.  It  is  as  if  a 
speaking-tube,  efficient  and  clear,  were  laid  between  one's 
house  or  office  and  every  other  in  the  web  that  radiates 
from  telephonic  headquarters.  A  speaking-tube  confines 
to  a  narrow  line  the  vibrations  which  without  it  would  agi- 
tate a  roomful  of  air;  hence  its  carrying  power.  A  telephone 
limits  to  a  narrower  line  of  metal  undulations  which  are 
incomparably  more  minute  ;  hence  an  effectiveness  as  much 
above  that  of  the  tube  as  the  mobility  of  a  molecule  exceeds 
that  of  a  mass. 

At  long  distances  the  bi  >on  of  conversation, — of  receiving 

an  instant  reply  to  a  question,  has  special  value.      A  patient 

confers  with  his  surgeon,  a  railroad  presi- 

Long-distance  Tele-      dent   with   his  counsel,   an    investor  with 

phony.  kjs    brokerj  as  if   they  stood  face  to  face. 

Because  of  this  new  facility  the  railroads 

between  New  York  and  Chicago  are  suffering  a  noteworthy 

loss  of  business;   their  rapid  trains  are  less  in  request  than 


VERSATILITY  235 

formerly.  Principals  and  agents,  clients  and  attorneys,  now 
find  it  unnecessary  to  travel  a  thousand  miles  that  their 
voices  may  be  accompanied  by  themselves.  Experiments 
of  promise  have  been  made  in  relaying  the  telephone,  so 
that,  as  in  the  case  of  the  telegraph,  a  message  may  be  sent 
to  an  indefinitely  great  distance  by  means  of  local  currents 
brought  here  and  there  into  the  line.  The  human  voice 
may  yet  belt  the  earth,  and  this  before  many  years  are 
past, 

It  has  been  found  possible  to  send  several  telephonic 
messages  simultaneously  over  the  same  wire,  either  in  one 
direction,  or  in  opposite  directions.  Should  these  experi- 
ments issue  in  commercial  success  the  telegraph  will  find  its 
rival  formidable  indeed.  In  the  hands  of  Dr.  Lodge  the 
telephone  has  been  refined  to  thirtyfold  its  ordinary  sensi- 
tiveness, in  which  form  it  is  an  unapproached  means  of 
revealing  minute  electric  currents.  To  pass  to  the  other 
extreme  of  telephonic  capacity,  Edison,  in  constructing  his 
megaphone,  enables  an  assembly  of  a  thousand  persons 
to  hear  an  oration,  an  orchestra,  or  a  chorus  borne  upon 
electric  waves  for  a  distance  of  a  hundred  miles  and  more. 
In  services  of  a  more  every-day  kind  let  us  mark  the  good 
offices  of  the  ordinary  instrument. 

The  acute  responsiveness  of  the  ordinary  telephone  at 
first  seemed  a  serious  barrier  to  its  use  for  long  distances. 
In  a  range  of  miles  its  wire  was  liable  to  come  into  the 
neighbourhood  of  telegraphic,  lighting,  or  power  circuits, 
whose  pulsations  it  reported  all  too  faithfully.  The  diffi- 
culty lay  in  balancing  each  disturbance  by  an  equal  and 
opposite  disturbance,  which  problem,  a  little  at  a  time, 
has  been  duly  solved.  The  first  improvement  was  in  mak- 
ing each  line  double,  so  as  to  discard  the  "  earth,"  borrowed 
from  telegraphy,  as  the  return  half  of  the  circuit.  This 
greatly  reduced  many  perturbing  influences,  and  barred  out 
others  completely.     Another  and  more  decided  betterment 


236  THE    TELEPHONE 

lay  in  making  the  two  wires  of  a  circuit  cross  each  other, 
without  touching,  at  every  mile  the  upper  wire  exchanging 
its  place  with  the  lower  wire.  This  plan  provides  effectual 
compensation  for  inductive  intrusions.leaving  to  the  engineer 
the  simple  question  of  furnishing  better  metallic  conductors. 
This  he  has  done,  first,  by  using  hard  drawn  copper  wire 
instead  of  iron,  and  next,  by  employing  this  in  a  size  which 
at  the  end  of  1899  had  reached  .165  of  an  inch.  Among 
the  cities  most  distant  from  each  other  which,  on  December 
3  1,  1899,  were  in  telephonic  communication  were  San  Fran- 
cisco and  Boise  City,  1  309  miles  apart ;  Boston  and  Mont- 
gomery, 1538  miles;  Boston  and  Omaha,  1556;  Seattle  and 
San  Diego,  1567;  Boston  and  Kansas  City,  1609;  Boston 
and  Duluth,  1652  ;  and  Boston  and  Little  Rock,  1793  miles. 
In  this  last  case  the  two  wires  which  form  the  circuit  weigh 
in  all  no  less  than  780  tons;  this  huge  mass  is  to  be  ex- 
ceeded by  that  of  the  line,  1859  miles  in  length,  soon  to 
connect  New  York  with  New  Orleans. 

Whether  for  distances  long  or  short,  the  telephone  confers 
something  like  ubiquity  upon  the  human  voice.  Physicians 
are  summoned  in  emergency  without  the 
Manifold  New  Benefits.  \oss  of  a  moment;  from  one's  arm-chair 
a  lawyer  or  a  banker  may  be  consulted 
as  readily  as  by  a  formal  visit;  a  manufacturer  from  his 
down-town  office  gives  orders  to  his  foreman  in  a  distant 
suburb;  housekeepers  go  to  market  every  morning  with- 
out taking  off  their  slippers ;  and  merchants  dispose  of  their 
wares  without  the  costly  travel  previously  required.  In  the 
first  critical  minute  of  a  lire  an  alarm  reaches  headquarters, 
and  when  an  accident  happens  on  a  trolley  line  help  is 
forthwith  despatched  from  the  nearest  station.  In  the  police 
departments  of  American  cities  the  telephone  has  unique 
value,  especially  when  foreigners  on  the  force  are  not  too 
familiar  with  English  spoken  or  written.  In  such  cases 
needed    explanations   can   be  given,  and,  what   is  of   equal 


VOCAL   UBIQUITY  237 

consequence,  a  speaker  may  be  identified  by  his  voice  as 
the  officer  authorised  to  command. 

By  its  means  the  chief  at  headquarters  is  in  touch  with 
every  member  of  the  force  at  times  of  uncommon  peril. 
When  a  great  holiday  parade  is  to  be  escorted  with  safety 
to  the  hosts  of  spectators  who  press  almost  beneath  the 
feet  of  its  horses,  when  a  riotous  mob  is  to  be  headed  off 
and  dispersed,  when  an  explosion  or  a  hurricane  involves  a 
city  in  disaster,  the  telephone  gives  a  control  much  more 
constant  and  direct  than  is  possible  to  the  telegraph.  In 
many  situations  the  telephone  enters  where  the  speaking- 
tube  has  no  admittance  and  the  telegraph-wire  is  scarcely 
feasible.  In  compressed-air  caissons  and  diving  work  the 
fluctuations  of  pressure  and  the  need  for  perfect  flexibility 
bar  out  a  rigid  tube,  as  well  as  the  telegraph  instrument 
with  its  liability  to  harm.  In  mines  the  distances  are 
usually  too  long  for  tubing,  and  noises  assail  even  short 
lengths  of  pipe  with  confusing  effect.  In  cold-storage 
warehouses  another  difficulty  is  confronted,  as  the  con- 
densation of  moisture  inside  a  pipe  may  render  it  worthless. 
A  telephonic  wire  in  all  these  circumstances  comes  in  with 
perfect  flexibility,  with  imperviousness  to  sound,  with  in- 
difference to  pressure,  and  a  trifling  cost.  Even  within 
what  at  first  seemed  an  unassailable  stronghold,  the  speak- 
ing-tube is  being  supplanted.  In  a  factory  the  desks  of  the 
chiefs  of  departments  are  now  being  united  by  telephones 
with  the  head  office  ;  so,  too,  in  great  warehouses,  stores,  and 
hotels.  In  the  largest  new  office  buildings,  all  the  tenants 
are  in  telephonic  communication  with  the  superintendent 
and  with  one  another. 

As  a  rule  a  telephone  exchange  is  nothing  more  than 
a  passive  agent,  resting  content  with  responding  to  Mr. 
Brown's  request  that  he  be  put  in  communication  with  Mr. 
Smith.  But  the  exchange  may  perform  other  duties  than 
these.      A  subscriber  may  be  called  up  at  any  hour  in  the 


238 


THE   TELEPHONE 


morning  he  wishes  ;  in  case  of  a  fire  in  or  near  his  business 
premises  he  may  be  duly  warned.  Among  the  singular 
examples  of  this  kind  of  aid  may  be  mentioned  the  arousal 
of  subscribers  desirous  of  witnessing  the  meteors  expected 
every  autumn  in  November.  Their  appearance  is  some- 
what irregular,  so  that  a  single  watcher  of  the  skies  replaces 
the  thousand  throughout  a  great  metropolis  who  might 
otherwise  waste  their  time. 

Sometimes  lines  of  metal  laid  for  a  very  different  purpose 
lend  themselves  to  telephony  as  well  as  if  they  had  been 
designed  for  nothing  else.  Barbed-wire  fences  not  only 
mark  the  bounds  of  a  Kansas  farm,  or  an  Australian  cattle- 
run,  but  furnish  admirable  telephonic  circuits.1  In  this  they 
are  beginning  to  ameliorate  the  isolation  of  country  life. 
When  roads  are  heavy,  or  impassable,  and  indeed  at  all 
times,  a  neighbourly  word  of  greeting  and  gossip  is  mote 
cheery  than  any  written  communications  can  ever  be. 

The  telephone,  despite  all  attempts  to  provide  it,  still 
lacks  a  simple  and  trustworthy  record ;  the  hopes  built 
upon  the  phonograph  in  this  regard  remain  unfulfilled. 
This  is  why  the  ticker,  which  prints  the  news  in  thousands 
of  American  offices  and  clubs,  has  newer  been  ousted  by 
the  Budapest  plan  of  a  continuous  news  service  by  tele- 
phone.     In  circumstances  where  the  telegraph  is  debarred 

1  Liberal,  Kansas,  is  a  centre  of  such  improvised  means  <>f  communication. 
Mr.  George  S.  Smith  writes  thence,  July  4,  1899:  "  The  Use  of  the  common 
wire  fence  as  a  conductor  is  sufficient  on  short  lines  <>l  ten  to  fifteen  miles  in 
dry  weather.  The  wire  carefully  connected,  no  solder  is  needed.  In  wet 
weather  the  feme  wire  makes  a  poor  connection.  We  have  a  line  thirty-five 
long,  using  the  fence  in  place  of  poles,  driving  the  nail  through  the  in- 
sulator i  1 J t >  >  the  top  nf  the  post.       This  makes  a  good  line  at  small  expense." 

A  rural  telephone  service  is  far  advanced  in  northeastern  Ohio,  and  particu- 
larly it  ounty,  which  is  strictly  an  agricultural  county.  Not  only  is 
n  office  in  every  township,  but  hundreds  of  farmers  have  telephones  in 
their  homes.  One  ol  tin-  companies,  the  Bainbridge,  is  strictly  a  farmers' 
company,  it  being  operated  by  eight  farmers,  who  own  everything  from  fran- 
chise to  switchboard.      1  lie  primary  object  in  constructing  the  lines  wa 


Plate  VI 


CHINESE    TELEPHONE   SUBSTATION. 
Pacific  Telephone  and  Telegraph  Co.,  San  Francisco. 


INDISPENSABLE  TO  THE  CHINESE    239 

from  the  direct  conveyance  of  word-symbols,  the  telephone 
enters  with  peculiar  value.      Until  Professor  Bell  perfected 
this  invention  a  Chinaman  was  denied  by 
the  structure  ol    his    language   any   im-       a  Godsend  to  the 
mediate  transmission  of  it  by  electricity-  Chinaman. 

Chinese  has  no  alphabet,  and  its  written 
signs  are  so  numerous  and  intricate  as  to  defy  reduction  to 
a  simple  telegraphic  code.  Two  methods  proffered  them- 
selves: first,  to  translate  a  Chinese  message  into  an  alpha- 
betical tongue,  telegraph  this,  ami  at  the  receiving-station 
run  the  risk  of  error  in  retranslating  into  Chinese;  second, 
in  the  original  Morse  method,  giving  a  number  to  each  word 
in  a  dictionary,  ami  telegraphing  numerals,  to  be  matched 
as  received  with  their  appropriate  signification. 

With  the  telephone  all  this  hazard  and  trouble  vanish  at 
once.  A  Chinaman  speaks  his  message  ;  it  is  received  exactly 
as  spoken,  either  by  his  correspondent  or  his  correspondent's 
scribe.  Mr.  Louis  Glass,  of  the  Pacific  Telephone  and  Tele- 
graph Company,  San  Francisco,  states  that  his  company 
has  a  substation  in  San  Francisco,  employing  three  Chinese 
attendants.  "  Their  ejaculatory  language  gives  peculiarly 
good  telephonic  results.  The  Chinese  do  a  very  large 
long-distance  business  throughout  the  whole  Pacific  coast, 
and  apparently  with  more  satisfactory  results  than  Knglish- 

t<>  build  them  for  an  investment,  but  as  a  help  in  the  transaction  of  business, 
ami  to  give  families  some  of  the  social  privileges  that  ate  too  often  lacking  on 

the  farm.  A  modem  [OO-drop  switchboard  is  centrally  located  in  the  home 
ol  one  o|  the  company,  who,  with  the  help  of  his  family,  attends  to  tin's  work 
very  satisfactorily.  The  rental  price  of  a  telephone  is  only  $12  a  year  in  ad- 
vance, <>r  $1.25   by  the  month,  and  this  entitles  the  subscriber,  his   family, 

hired  help,  and  euests  to  the  free  use  of  the  lines,  and  also  ol  those  wild 
which  tile  company  has  reciprocity  contracts.  This  company  Started  with 
three  subscribers  outside  its  organisers,  and  now  it  has  more  than  fifty,  with 
thirty  miles  "l  polos,  and  one  hundred  of  wire.  The  1"«  rental  is  only  made 
possible  in  the  country  by  placing  several  telephones  in  each  circuit,  usually 
one  street  or  im  ighbourhood  being  on  the  same  wire. — American  Agriculturist, 
October  7,    1899. 


24o  THE   TELEPHONE 

speaking  subscribers"  (Plate  VI).  In  British  Columbia,  the 
Victoria  Telephone  Company  reports  a  similar  success  with 
a  circle  of  Chinese  subscribers,  some  fifty  in  number. 

In  New  York,  Chicago,  and  other  large  American  cities, 
the  telephones  used  for  local  circuits  are  available  for  long- 
distance  operation,  so   that  a  subscriber 
Local  and  Long-dis-     from  his  office-desk  or  parlor-table  may 

tance  Systems  as  Com-         ..  ..  .  ..... 

bined  in  Sweden.  *<"*  a  mile  or  a  thousand  miles  with 
equal  facility.  In  Stockholm  the  tele- 
phone service  is  noteworthy  for  its  cheapness,  and  for 
its  union  of  a  network  of  communication  which  extends 
throughout  Sweden  from  the  nucleus  afforded  by  the  local 
systems  of  the  capital.  In  Stockholm,  with  a  population 
of  283,000,  there  were  on  August  15,  1899,  no  fewer  than 
24,179  subscribers  to  the  three  installations.  Two  of  these, 
the  Allmanna  and  the  Bell,  had  19,020  subscribers;  the 
third,  which  is  a  government  service,  had  5159.  Accept- 
ing the  usual  number  of  a  household  as  being  six,  we  have 
thus  a  telephone  for  every  two  households  in  the  Scandi- 
navian capital.  The  lowness  of  charges  has  had  much 
to  do  with  this  unexampled  popularity  of  the  instrument. 
The  Allmanna  allows  a  subscriber  to  have  an  independent 
line,  and  unlimited  use  of  it,  for  80  crowns  ($21.60)  a  year. 
If  he  will  share  his  line  with  another  subscriber,  the  charge 
falls  to  60  crowns  ($16.20).  The  Bell  Company  serves 
residences  solely  ;  it  furnishes  each  subscriber  with  an  in- 
dependent line  for  36  crowns  ($9.72)  a  year;  for  every 
conversation  beyond  100  in  each  quarter  a  toll  of  10  ore 
(_'  ,7,,  cents)  is  levied. 

It"  a  subscriber  to  the  Allmanna  Company  chooses  to  pay 
100  crowns  {$2j)  a  year,  he  may  converse  with  the  Bell 
subscribers  to  his  heart's  content.  Without  extra  payment 
the  subscribers  to  both  concerns  may  talk  to  $850  sub- 
scribers in  the  country  surrounding  Stockholm  for  a  radius 
ot   forty-five   miles.     A  country  subscriber  has  privileges 


SWEDEN    LEADS    THE   WORLD       241 

wider  still.  He  is  at  liberty  to  talk  within  a  radius  of  ninety 
miles  from  home  without  extra  charge.  Mr.  H.  T.  Ceder- 
gren  of  the  Allmanna  Company,  who  courteously  gives  me 
this  information,  estimated  the  total  number  of  telephones 
in  Sweden  in  use  on  August  15,  1899,  as  about  65,000  for 
a  total  population  of  4,900,000.  In  establishing  a  tariff  on 
the  lowest  possible  terms,  and  graduating  its  charges  ac- 
cording to  the  services  rendered,  the  example  of  Sweden  is 
one  that  points  the  way  to  a  popularity  for  the  telephone 
such  as  it  has  not  had  elsewhere  in  the  civilised  world. 

Long-distance  telephony  exerts  a  rivalry  with  the  tele- 
graph  which   grows  keener  month  by  month,  as  the  net- 
work of  arteries  for  electric  speech  ex- 
tends farther  from  North  to  South,  from  The  Telephone  and  the 

East    tO    West,    SO    that    the    question   SUg-       Telegraph  as  Rivals. 

gests  itself,  Will  this  rivalry  gain  strength 
in  the  future?  The  main  advantage  of  the  telegraph  is 
that  a  positive  record  is  on  file  at  each  end  of  the  line. 
When  one  writes  a  message  and  leaves  it  with  a  telegraph 
clerk  his  task  is  at  an  end ;  he  need  waste  no  time  waiting, 
perhaps  nearly  an  hour,  while  the  line  is  "busy."  The 
telegraph,  too,  can  send  news  to  a  hundred  or  more  offices 
at  a  single  sending  operation,  and  with  the  aid  of  machinery 
can  far  outspeed  the  voice.  The  strong  points  of  the  tele- 
phone, on  the  other  hand,  are  its  simplicity  and  immediacy, 
from  which,  however,  must  be  subtracted  the  disadvantage 
that,  contrary  to  a  general  rule,  the  larger  a  telephonic  ex- 
change the  more  does  the  installation  cost  per  subscriber. 
In  the  first  place,  the  average  wire  is  much  longer  in  a  great 
city  like  New  York  than  in  Buffalo,  a  community  but  one- 
sixth  as  populous ;  and  secondly,  a  switchboard  and  its 
accessories  when  doubled  in  extent  demand  a  more  than 
doubled  outlay ;  while,  too,  the  larger  a  city  the  greater  is 
the  average  number  of  calls  per  subscriber.  In  many  ways 
a  telephone  and  a  telegraph  system  may  supplement  each 


242  THE   TELEPHONE 

other  most  usefully.  A  message  of  only  ordinary  impor- 
tance may  be  intrusted  through  the  telephone  to  a  telegraph 
office  for  transmission,  and  vice  versa.  In  many  cases  an 
order  including  figures  of  moment  is  sent  by  telephone,  and 
for  safety's  sake  these  figures,  by  themselves,  are  also  tele- 
graphed. Considering  the  fact  that  this  is  an  era  when  men 
of  capital  combine  rather  than  divide,  the  prospect  seems  to 
be  that  the  old  and  the  new  modes  of  electric  communication 
may  before  many  years  have  but  one  headship  and  a  com- 
mon purse. 

In  work  strictly  scientific  the  telephone  widens  the  range 
of  the  ear  as  much  as  the  microscope  enlarges  that  of  the  eye. 
The  ear  is  really  sensitive  to  a  degree  un- 
a  Marvel  of  Sensi-  suspected  before  the  invention  of  Pro- 
tiveness.  fessor  Bell  measured  its  responsiveness. 

Sound  may  be  distinctly  heard  through 
a  telephonic  disc  whose  motion  involves  next  to  no  energy 
at  all.  It  is  estimated  that  an  electric  current  derived  from 
a  pound- weight  in  slowly  descending  one  foot  could  keep 
up  an  audible  sound  in  an  ordinary  telephone  for  three  th<  >u- 
sand  years;  and  that  a  sixteen-candle-power  lamp  receives 
a  current  strong  enough  to  yield,  an  audible  signal  in  sixty 
million  million  telephones  of  the  refined  type  due  to  Pro- 
fessor Lodge  Hence  the  exquisite  sensitiveness  of  the 
instrument  when  flaws  are  to  be  found  in  metal  shafts  or 
plates,  when  breaks  are  to  be  located  in  ocean  cables,  or  an 
infinitesimal  current  is  to  be  detected  in  its  escape  from 
insulation.  The  main  incitement  in  the  quest  for  new  sub- 
stances is  the  hope  that  they  may  be  found  to  possess  certain 
desired  properties.  An  instrument  such  as  the  telephone 
which  enables  us  to  observe  the  behaviour  of  familiar  steel 
or  copper  from  fresh  sides,  does  as  much  as  it  it  gave  us 
substances  unknown  before. 

At  this  point  we  are  brought  to  consider  electricity  as  an 
educator  and  quickener  of  the  senses.      Operators  who  listen 


THE   SENSES   QUICKENED  243 

intently  hour  after  hour  at  the  telephone,  develop  an  acute- 
ness  well-nigh  magical  in  fixing  the  point  at  which  a  cable 
has  parted  under  the  sea,  or  one  land  wire 
has  crossed  another.      When  telegraphs      Electricity  and  the 
were  first  installed  in  America  their  mes- 
sages were  indented  on  paper  registers ; 
but  very  soon  the  operators  were  able  to  receive  the  words 
by  ear  instead  of  through  the  eye.      The  "  sounders  "  of 
every  telegraph  office  in  America  testify  to  the  commonness 
of  a  faculty  once  deemed  rare, that  is  to-day  widely  cultivated 
as  a  means  of  livelihood.      Expert  telegraphers  now  transmit 
as  many  as  fifty   words  a  minute  when  the  messages  and 
the  words  are  short;   they  receive  and   immediately  type- 
write such  messages  at  the  same  speed. 

In  large  telephonic  exchanges,  and  other  places  where 
peace  and  quiet  are  desired,  small  electric  lamps  are  lighted 
by  way  of  signal,  instead  of  ringing  bells.  So  sensitive  do 
attendants  become  that  lamps  of  the  tiniest  size  are  sufficient. 
The  most  exacting  field  of  electrical  communication  is  that 
of  ocean  cables.  Here  Mr.  A.  E.  Kennelly  says:  "So  ac- 
curate does  a  skilled  operator  become  that  he  may  work 
steadily  eight  hours  a  day  sending  and  receiving  messages, 
yet  not  fall  into  one  error  in  a  whole  month's  work."  What 
this  means  in  precision  of  eye  may  be  comprehended  in 
some  measure  by  casting  a  glance  at  the  broken  curves  of 
a  telegram  as  they  swing  out  from  a  cable  wire  (Fig.  63). 
An  ancient  dictum  of  philosophy  tells  us  that  there  is  noth- 
ing in  the  mind  that  has  not  been  in  the  senses.  To  give 
the  senses  new  alertness  and  impressibility,  to  add  to  the 
eye,  the  ear,  and  the  hand  instruments  a  thousandfold  more 
delicate,  is  clearly  to  lift  research  to  new  heights  and  offer 
it  horizons  unimagined  before. 

Of  all  the  progeny  of  the  telephone  none  is  more  amazing 
than  the  photophone,  also  created  by  Professor  Alexander 
Graham    Bell.       The   telephone   employs   electricity  as  its 


244 


THE   TELEPHONE 


intermediary  between  sound  from  the  lip  and  sound  striking 
the  ear;   the  photophone  for  the  like  mediation  uses  light 
instead  of  electricity.     Milton  in  a  famous 
The  Photophone.       passage  pictures  Uriel  sliding  from  hea- 
ven to  earth  on  a  sunbeam  ;   if  the  poet 
had   bidden   him   speak   through   the  sunbeam  so  that   he 
need  not  have  descended  from  the  sky,  he  would  not  have 
more  boldly  departed  from  unpoetical  facts — as  facts  were 
within  the  ken  of  practical  men  in  the  seventeenth  century.1 
For  simplicity  the  photophone  is  comparable  with  the  tele- 
phone itself  (Fig.  79).      A  speaker  directs  his  voice  upon  a 
mirror  of  flexible  mica,  or  microscope  glass,  B.    Upon  B  light 


Fig.  79- 
Photophone. 

is  thrown  from  the  sun  or  a  powerful  lamp  by  the  mirror  M 
and  the  lenses  A  and  L.  As  B  vibrates  in  unison  with  the 
voice  the  rays  of  light  reflected  from  />'  through  the  lens  A' 
to  the  distant  parabolic  mirror  CC  have  undulations  cor- 
responding to  those  of  tin-  spoken  words.  How  shall  light 
enable  us  to  hear  these  words  ?  Selenium  has  already  been 
mentioned  as  heightened  in  electrical  conductivity  when 
light  shines  upon  it;  that  conductivity,  of  course,  will  vary 
when  light  of  varying  intensity,  as  in  thi>  ease,  impinges 

1  Paradise  Lost,  Book  IV,  line  555. 


LIGHT    BECOMES   VOCAL  245 

upon  it.  The  arriving  beam  is  focussed  upon  a  selenium 
receiver,  S,  connected  with  a  voltaic  cell,  P,  and  the  tele- 
phonic ear-pieces  T,  T,  with  the  marvellous  effect  that  the 
message  is  distinctly  heard. 

Why,  it  may  be  asked,  has  not  the  photophone,  invented 
as  long  ago  as  1880,  been  exhibited  to  the  public  as  freely 
as  the  radioscope,  devised  as  recently  as  1 896  ?  The  answer 
is  that  to  secure  a  beam  of  light  sufficiently  uniform  is  so 
difficult  that  experiments  on  a  popular  scale  are  most 
troublesome.  Variations  of  light,  too  small  for  detection 
by  the  eye,  give  rise  to  disturbing  noises  in  the  receiver. 
Again,  the  photophone  has  no  such  practical  utility  as  the 
radioscope,  at  least  for  the  present ;  so  long  as  messages 
can  be  sent  by  better  means,  the  luminous  ray  will  not  be 
added  to  the  resources  of  verbal  communication.  Pro- 
fessor Bell  has  discovered  that  he  may  on  occasion  dispense 
with  the  photophone,  that  the  unassisted  ear  receives  sounds 
directly  from  intermittent  light,  and,  further,  that  all  sub- 
stances whatever,  carbon  in  the  form  of  lampblack  particu- 
larly, are  excited  to  sonorous  vibration  by  a  flickering  ray. 
Here  in  an  unexpected  quarter  is  confirmation  of  two  general 
laws  formulated  long  ago :  first,  that  all  properties  in  some 
degree  or  other  are  present  in  all  forms  of  matter;  second, 
that  a  property  may  be,  and  usually  is,  pre-eminently  mani- 
fested in  a  single  substance.  We  are  apt  to  think  of  light 
and  sound  as  unrelated  modes  of  motion;  the  photophone 
shows  us  how  easily  one  may  become  the  other  and  then 
return  to  its  first  estate. 

The  singular  responsiveness  of  selenium  to  light  is  at  the 
foundation  of  a  plan  for  seeing  at  long  range,  through 
wires.  An  image  is  to  be  represented 
by  squares  black  and  white,  arranged  Seeing  through  wires, 
sampler  fashion.  Behind  each  square  is 
to  be  a  selenium  cell  affected,  in  its  electric  current,  by  the 
blackness  or  whiteness  in  front  of  it.      Each  cell  is  to  be 


24f>  THE   TELEPHONE 

then  connected  with  a  distant  partner  cell,  which  will  show 
a  black  or  white  disc  according  as  the  received  current  is 
strong  <>r  weak.  The  assemblage  of  these  second  repeating- 
discs  will  afford  the  image  anew.  The  many  wires  indis- 
pensable to  this  scheme  place  it  among  the  ingenious 
suggestions  that  demand  so  large  an  outlay  as  to  remain 
suggestions  merely. 


CHAPTER    XVIII 

ELECTRICITY— A  REVIEW  AND  A  PROSPECT 

LET  us   compare   electricity  with   its  precursor,  fire,  and 
j  we  shall   understand  the   revolution  by  which   fire  is 
now  in  so  many  tasks  supplanted  by  the  electric  pulse  which, 
the   while,  creates   for  itself  a  thousand 
fields    denied  to  flame.       Copper   is   an         „ 

r tr  Energy  in  its 

excellent    thermal    conductor,    and    yet  Best  Phase, 

it  transmits  heat  almost  infinitely  more 
slowly  than  it  conveys  electricity.  One  end  of  a  thick 
copper  rod  ten  feet  long  may  be  safely  held  in  the  hand 
while  the  other  end  is  heated  to  redness,  yet  one  millionth 
part  of  this  same  energy,  if  in  the  form  of  electricity,  would 
traverse  the  rod  in  i^-oroVoTor^o"  part  of  a  second.  Compare 
next  electricity  with  light,  often  the  companion  of  heat. 
Light  travels  in  straight  lines  only  ;  electricity  can  go  round 
a  corner  every  inch  for  miles,  and,  none  the  worse,  yield  a 
brilliant  beam  at  the  end  of  its  journey.  Indirectly,  therefore, 
electricity  enables  us  to  conduct  either  heat  or  light  as  if 
both  were  flexible  pencils  of  rays,  and  subject  to  but  the 
smallest  tolls  in  their  travel. 

We  have  remarked  upon  such  methods  as  those  of  the 
electric  welder  which  summon  intense  heat  without  fire,  and 
we  have  glanced  at  the  electric  lamps  which  shine  just  be- 
cause combustion  is  impossible  through  their  rigid  exclusion 
of  air.      Then  for  a  moment  we  paused  to  look  at  the  plating 

247 


248  ELECTRICITY— A    REVIEW 

baths  which  have  developed  themselves  into  a  command- 
ing rivalry   with   the   blaze  of  the  smelting  furnace,   with 

the   flame  which   from   time  immemorial 
Heat  Banished.        has  filled  the  ladle  of  the  founder  and 

moulder.  Thus  methods  that  commenced 
in  dismissing  flame  end  boldly  by  dispossessing  heat  itself. 
But,  it  may  be  said,  this  usurping  electricity  usually  finds 
its  source,  after  all,  in  combustion  under  a  steam-boiler. 
True,  but  mark  the  harnessing  of  Niagara,  of  the  Lachine 
Rapids  near  Montreal,  of  a  thousand  streams  elsewhere. 
In  the  near  future  motive  power  of  nature's  giving  is  to  be 
wasted  less  and  less,  and  perforce  will  more  and  more  exclude 
heat  from  the  chain  of  transformations  which  issue  in  the 
locomotive's  flight,  in  the  whirl  of  factory  and  mill.  Thus 
in  some  degree  is  allayed  the  fear,  never  well  grounded, 
that  when  the  coal-fields  of  the  globe  are  spent  civilisation 
must  collapse.  As  the  electrician  hears  this  foreboding  he 
recalls  how  much  fuel  is  wasted  in  converting  heat  into 
electricity.  He  looks  beyond  either  turbine  or  shaft  turned 
by  wind  or  tide,  and,  remembering  that  the  metal  dissolved 
in  his  battery  yields  at  his  will  its  full  content  of  energy, 
either  as  heat  or  electricity,  he  asks,  Why  may  not  coal  or 
forest  tree,  which  are  but  other  kinds  of  fuel,  be  made  to 
do  the  same  ? 

One  of  the  earliest  uses  of  light  was  as  a  means  of  com- 
municating intelligence,  and  to  this  day  the  signal  lamp  and 

the  red  fire  of  the  mariner  are  as  useful 

as  of  old.      But  how  much  wider  is  the 

Perfected  Com- 
munication, field  of  electricity  as  it  creates  the  tele- 
graph and  the  telephone!  In  the  tele- 
graph we  have  all  that  a  pencil  of  light  could  be  were  it  as 
long  as  an  equatorial  girdle  and  as  flexible  as  a  silken  thread. 
In  the  telephone  for  nearly  two  thousand  miles  the  pulsa- 
tions of  a  speaker's  voice  are  not  only  audible,  but  retain 
their  characteristic  tones. 


PERFECT   CONVERTIBILITY  249 

In  the  field  of  mechanics  electricity  is  decidedly  prefera- 
ble to  any  other  agent.  Heat  may  be  transformed  into 
motive  power  by  a  suitable  engine,  but 

,1  1        ,     1   •!•.         ■  .  1  a  Supreme  Versa- 

tnere  its  adaptability  is  at  an  end.      An  .u 

electric  current  drives  not  only  a  motor, 
but  every  machine  and  tool  attached  to  the  motor,  the 
whole  executing  tasks  of  a  delicacy  and  complication  new 
to  industrial  art.  On  an  electric  railroad  an  identical  current 
propels  the  train,  directs  it  by  telegraph,  operates  its  signals, 
provides  it  with  light  and  heat,  while  it  stands  ready  to  give 
constant  verbal  communication  with  any  station  on  the  line, 
if  this  be  desired. 

In  the  home  electricity  has  equal  versatility,  at  once  pro- 
moting healthfulness,  refinement,  and  safety.  Its  tiny  but- 
ton expels  the  hazardous  match  as  it  lights  a  lamp  which 
sends  forth  no  baleful  fumes.  An  electric  fan  brings  fresh 
air  into  the  house — in  summer  as  a  grateful  breeze.  Simple 
telephones,  quite  effective  for  their  few  yards  of  wire,  give 
a  better  because  a  more  flexible  service  than  speaking-tubes. 
Fewinvalids  are  too  feeble  to  whisper  at  the  light,  portable  ear 
of  metal.  Sewing-machines  and  the  more  exigent  apparatus 
of  the  kitchen  and  laundry  transfer  their  demands  from 
flagging  human  muscles  to  the  tireless  sinews  of  electric 
motors — which  ask  no  wages  when  they  stand  unemployed. 
Similar  motors  already  enjoy  favour  in  working  the  elevators 
of  tall  dwellings  in  cities.  If  a  householder  is  timid  about 
burglars,  the  electrician  offers  him  a  sleepless  watchman  in 
the  guise  of  an  automatic  alarm  ;  if  he  has  a  dread  of  fire, 
let  him  dispose  on  his  walls  an  array  of  thermometers  that 
at  the  very  inception  of  a  blaze  will  strike  a  gong  at  head- 
quarters. But  these,  after  all,  are  matters  of  minor  impor- 
tance in  comparison  with  the  foundations  upon  which  may 
be  reared,  not  a  new  piece  of  mechanism,  but  a  new  science 
or  a  new  art. 

In  the  recent  and  swift  subjugation  of  the  territory  open 


250  ELECTRICITY— A    REVIEW 

alike  to  the  chemist  and  the  electrician,  where  each  ad- 
vances the  quicker  for  the  other's  company,  we  have  fresh 
confirmation  of  an  old   truth  —  that   the 
Electricity  in  the  Field  boundary  lines  which  mark  off  one  field 
of  Research.  0f  science  from  another  are  purely  arti- 

ficial, are  set  up  only  for  temporary  con- 
venience. The  chemist  has  only  to  dig  deep  enough  to 
find  that  the  physicist  and  himself  occupy  common  ground. 
"  Delve  from  the  surface  of  your  sphere  to  its  heart,  and  at 
once  your  radius  joins  every  other."  Even  the  briefest 
glance  at  electrochemistry  should  pause  to  acknowledge 
its  profound  debt  to  the  new  theories  as  to  the  bonding  of 
atoms  to  form  molecules,  and  of  the  continuity  between 
solution  and  electrical  dissociation.  However  much  these 
hypotheses  may  be  modified  as  more  light  is  shed  on  the 
geometry  and  the  journey ings  of  the  molecule,  they  have 
for  the  time  being  recommended  themselves  as  finder- 
thoughts  of  golden  value.  These  speculations  of  the  chem- 
ist carry  him  back  perforce  to  the  days  of  his  childhood. 
As  he  then  joined  together  his  black  and  white  bricks  he 
found  that  he  could  build  cubes  of  widely  different  patterns. 
It  was  in  propounding  a  theory  of  molecular  architecture 
that  Kekule  gave  an  impetus  to  a  vast  and  growing  branch 
of  chemical  industry  —  that  of  the  synthetic  production  of 
dyes  and  allied  compounds. 

It  was  in  pure  research,  in  paths  undirected  to  the  market- 
place, that  such  theories  have  been  thought  out.  Let  us 
consider  electricity  as  an  aid  to  investigation  conducted  for 
its  own  sake.  The  chief  physical  generalisation  of  our  time, 
and  of  all  time,  the  persistence  of  force,  emerged  t<>  view 
only  with  the  dawn  of  electric  art.  When  it  was  observed 
that  electricity  might  become  heat,  light,  chemical  action, 
or  mechanical  motion,  that  in  turn  any  of  these  might  pro- 
duce electricity,  it  was  at  once  indicated  that  all  these 
phases  of  energy  might  differ  from  each  other  only  as  the 


THE   DEBT    TO    RESEARCH  251 

movements  in  circles,  volutes,  and  spirals  of  ordinary  mech- 
anism. The  suggestion  was  confirmed  when  electrical 
measurers  were  refined  to  the  utmost  precision,  and  a  single 
quantum  of  energy  was  revealed  a  very  Proteus  in  its  dis- 
guises, yet  beneath  these  disguises  nothing  but  constancy 
itself. 

"  There  is  that  scattereth,  and  yet  increaseth ;  and  there 
is  that  withholdeth  more  than  is  meet,  but  it  tendeth  to 
poverty."  Because  the  geometers  of  old  patiently  explored 
the  properties  of  the  triangle,  the  circle,  and  the  ellipse, 
simply  for  pure  love  of  truth,  they  laid  the  corner-stones 
for  the  arts  of  the  architect,  the  engineer,  and  the  navigator. 
In  like  manner  it  was  the  disinterested  work  of  investigation 
conducted  by  Ampere,  Faraday,  Henry,  and  their  compeers 
in  ascertaining  the  laws  of  electricity  which  made  possible 
the  telegraph,  the  telephone,  the  dynamo,  and  the  electric 
furnace.  The  vital  relations  between  pure  research  and 
economic  gain  have  at  last  worked  themselves  clear.  It  is 
perfectly  plain  that  a  man  who  has  it  in  him  to  discover  laws 
of  matter  and  energy  does  incomparably  more  for  his  kind 
than  if  he  carried  his  talents  to  the  mint  for  conversion  into 
coin.  The  voyage  of  a  Columbus  may  not  immediately 
bear  as  much  fruit  as  the  uncoverings  of  a  mine  prospector, 
but  in  the  long  run  a  Columbus  makes  possible  the  finding 
many  mines  which  without  him  no  prospector  would  ever 
see.  Therefore  let  the  seed-corn  of  knowledge  be  planted 
rather  than  eaten.  But  in  choosing  between  one  research 
and  another  it  is  impossible  to  foretell  which  may  prove  the 
richer  in  its  harvests ;  for  instance,  all  attempts  thus  far 
economically  to  oxidise  carbon  for  the  production  of  elec- 
tricity have  failed,  yet  in  observations  that  at  first  seemed 
equally  barren  have  lain  the  hints  to  which  we  owe  the  in- 
candescent lamp  and  the  wireless  telegraph. 

Perhaps  the  most  promising  field  of  electrical  research 
is  that  of  discharges  at  high  pressures ;    here  the  leading 


252  ELECTRICITY— A    REVIEW 

American  investigators  are  Professor  John  Trowbridge  and 
Professor  Elihu  Thomson.  Employing  a  tension  estimated 
at  one  and  a  half  million  volts,  Professor  Trowbridge  has 
produced  flashes  of  lightning  six  feet  in  length  in  atmo- 
spheric air;  in  a  tube  exhausted  to  one-seventh  of  atmo- 
spheric pressure  the  flashes  extended  themselves  to  forty 
feet.  According  to  this  inquirer,  the  familiar  rending  of 
trees  by  lightning  is  due  to  the  intense  heat  developed  in 
an  instant  by  the  electric  spark;  the  sudden  expansion  of 
air  or  steam  in  the  cavities  of  the  wood  causes  an  explosion. 
The  experiments  of  Professor  Thomson  confront  him  with 
some  of  the  seeming  contradictions  which  ever  await  the 
explorer  of  new  scientific  territory.  In  the  atmosphere  an 
electrical  discharge  is  facilitated  when  a  metallic  terminal 
(as  a  lightning-rod)  is  shaped  as  a  point;  under  oil  a  point 
is  the  form  least  favourable  to  discharge.  In  the  same  line 
of  paradox  it  is  observed  that  oil  steadily  improves  in  its 
insulating  effect  the  higher  the  electrical  pressure  committed 
to  its  keeping;  with  air  as  an  insulator  the  contrary  is  the 
fact.  These  and  a  goodly  array  of  similar  puzzles  will, 
without  doubt,  be  cleared  up  as  students  in  the  twentieth 
century  pass  from  the  twilight  of  anomaly  to  the  sunshine 
of  ascertained  law. 

"  Before  there  can  be  applied  science  there  must  be 
science  to  apply,"  and  it  is  by  enabling  the  investigator  to 
know  nature  under  a  fresh  aspect  that  electricity  rises  to 
its  highest  office.  The  laboratory  routine  of  ascertaining 
the  conductivity,  polarisability,  and  other  electrical  prop- 
erties of  matter  is  dull  and  exacting  work,  but  it  opens  to 
the  student  new  windows  through  which  to  peer  at  the  ar- 
chitecture of  matter.  That  architecture,  as  it  rises  to  his 
view,  discloses  one  law  of  structure  after  another;  what  in 
a  first  and  clouded  glance  seemed  anomaly  is  now  resolved 
and  reconciled;  order  displays  itself  where  once  anarchy 
alone  appeared.     When  the  investigator  now  needs  a  sub- 


EXPLOITATION    AIDS    RESEARCH     253 

stance  of  peculiar  properties  he  knows  where  to  find  it,  or 
has  a  hint  for  its  creation — a  creation  perhaps  new  in  the 
history  of  the  world.  As  he  thinks  of  the  wealth  of  qualities 
possessed  by  his  store  of  alloys,  salts,  acids,  alkalies,  new 
uses  for  them  are  borne  into  his  mind.  Yet  more — a  new 
orchestration  of  inquiry  is  possible  by  means  of  the  in- 
struments created  for  him  by  the  electrician,  through  the 
advances  in  method  which  these  instruments  effect.  With 
a  second  and  more  intimate  point  of  view  arrives  a  new 
trigonometry  of  the  particle,  a  trigonometry  inconceivable 
in  pre-electric  days.  Hence  a  surround  is  in  progress  which 
early  in  the  twentieth  century  may  go  full  circle,  making 
atom  and  molecule  as  obedient  to  the  chemist  as  brick  and 
stone  are  to  the  builder  now. 

The  laboratory  investigator  and  the  commercial  exploiter 
of  his  discoveries  have  been  by  turns  borrower  and  lender, 
to  the  great  profit  of  both.  What  Leyden  jar  could  ever 
be  constructed  of  the  size  and  revealing  power  of  an  Atlantic 
cable  ?  And  how  many  refinements  of  measurement,  of 
purification  of  metals,  of  precision  in  manufacture,  have 
been  imposed  by  the  colossal  investments  in  deep-sea  teleg- 
raphy alone!  When  a  current  admitted  to  an  ocean  cable, 
such  as  that  between  Brest  and  New  York,  can  choose  for 
its  path  either  3540  miles  of  copper  wire  or  a  quarter  of  an 
inch  of  gutta-percha,  there  is  a  dangerous  opportunity  for 
escape  into  the  sea,  unless  the  current  is  of  nicely  adjusted 
strength,  and  the  insulator  has  been  made  and  laid  with  the 
best-informed  skill,  the  most  conscientious  care.  In  the 
constant  tests  required  in  laying  the  first  cables  Lord  Kelvin 
(then  Professor  William  Thomson)  felt  the  need  for  better 
designed  and  more  sensitive  galvanometers  or  current  mea- 
surers. His  great  skill  both  as  a  mathematician  and  a 
mechanician  created  the  existing  instruments,  which  seem 
beyond  improvement.  They  serve  not  only  in  commerce 
and  manufacture,  but  in  promoting  the  strictly  scientific 


254  ELECTRICITY— A    REVIEW 

work  of  the  laboratory.  Now  that  electricity  purifies  cop- 
per as  fire  cannot,  the  mathematician  is  able  to  treat  his 
problems  of  long-distance  transmission,  of  traction,  ol  ma- 
chine design,  with  an  economy  and  certainty  impossible 
when  his  materials  were  not  simply  impure,  but  impure  in 
varying  and  indefinite  degrees.  The  factory  and  the  work- 
shop originally  took  their  magneto-machines  from  the  <  \- 
perimental  laboratory  ;  they  have  returned  them  remodelled 
beyond  recognition  as  dynamos  and  motors  of  almost  ideal 
effectiveness. 

A  galvanometer  actuated  by  a  thermo-electric  pile  fur- 
nishes much  the  most  sensitive  means  of  detecting  changes 
of  temperature;  hence  electricity  enables  the  physicist  to 
study  the  phenomena  of  heat  with  new  ease  and  precision 
It  was  thus  that  Professor  Tyndall  conducted  the  classical 
researches  set  forth  in  his  Heat  as  a  Mode  of  Motion,  ascer- 
taining the  singular  power  to  absorb  terrestrial  heat  which 
makes  the  aqueous  vapour  of  the  atmosphere  act  as  an  in- 
dispensable blanket  to  the  earth. 

And  how  vastly  has  electricity,  whether  in  the  workshop 

or  laboratory,  enlarged  our  conceptions  of  the  forces  that 

thrill  space,  of  the  substances,  seemingly 

The  Universe  i         ,1  j  i_    . 

„  .       .  so  simple,  that  surround  us  —  substances 

Enlarged.  i        ' 

that  propound  questions  of  structure  and 
behaviour  that  silence  the  acutest  investigator.  "  You  ask 
me,"  said  a  great  physicist,  "if  1  have  a  theory  of  the 
universe f  Why,  I  have  n't  even  a  theory  of  magnetism!  " 
The  conventional  phrase  "conducting  a  current  "  is  now 
understood  t<>  be  mere  figure  of  speech;  it  is  thought  that 
a  wire  does  little  else  than  give  direction  to  electric  energy. 
Pulsations  of  high  tension  have  been  proved  to  be  mainly 
superfu  ial  in  their  journeys,  so  that  they  are  best  conveyed 
(or  convoyed)  by  conductors  of  tubular  form.  And  what 
is  it  that  moves  when  we  speak  of  conduction?  It  seems 
to  be  now  the  molecule  of  atomic  chemistry,  ami  anon  the 


FRICTION    ABSENT  255 

same  ether  that  undulates  with  light  or  radiant  heat.  In- 
deed, the  conquest  of  electricity  means  so  much  because 
it  impresses  the  molecule  and  the  ether  into  service  as  its 
vehicles  of  communication.  Instead  of  the  old-time  masses 
of  metal,  or  bands  of  leather,  which  moved  stiffly  through 
ranges  comparatively  short,  there  is  to-day  employed  a 
medium  which  may  traverse  186,400  miles  a  second,  and 
with  resistances  most  trivial  in  contrast  with  those  of  me- 
chanical friction. 

And  what  is  friction  in  the  last  analysis  but  the  production 
of  motion  in  undesired  forms,  the  allowing  valuable  energy 
to  do  useless  work?  In  that  amazing  case  of  long-distance 
transmission,  common  sunshine,  a  solar  beam  arrives  at  the 
earth  from  the  sun  not  one  whit  the  weaker  for  its  excursion 
of  92,000,000  miles.  It  is  highly  probable  that  we  are 
surrounded  by  similar  cases  of  the  total  absence  of  friction 
in  the  phenomena  of  both  physics  and  chemistry,  and  that 
art  will  come  nearer  and  nearer  to  nature  in  this  immunity 
is  assured  when  we  see  how  many  steps  in  that  direction 
have  already  been  taken  by  the  electrical  engineer.  In  a 
preceding  page  a  brief  account  was  given  of  the  theory  that 
gases  and  vapours  are  in  ceaseless  motion.  This  motion 
suffers  no  abatement  from  friction,  and  hence  we  may  infer 
that  the  molecules  concerned  are  perfectly  elastic.  The 
opinion  is  gaining  ground  among  physicists  that  all  the 
properties  of  matter,  transparency,  chemical  combinability, 
and  the  rest,  are  due  to  immanent  motion  in  particular 
orbits,  with  diverse  velocities.  If  this  be  established,  then 
these  motions  also  suffer  no  friction,  and  go  on  without 
resistance  forever. 

As  the  investigators  in  the  vanguard  of  science  discuss 
the  constitution  of  matter,  and  weave  hypotheses  more  or 
less  fruitful  as  to  the  interplay  of  its  forces,  there  is  a  grow- 
ing faith  that  the  day  is  at  hand  when  the  tie  between  elec- 
tricity and  gravitation  will  be  unveiled — when  the  reason 


256  ELECTRICITY— A    REVIEW 

why  matter  has  weight  will  cease  to  puzzle  the  thinker. 
Who  can  tell  what  relief  of  man's  estate  may  be  bound  up 
with  the  ability  to  transform  any  phase  of  energy  into  any 
other  without  the  circuitous  methods  and  serious  losses  of 
to-day!  In  the  sphere  of  economic  progress  one  of  the 
supreme  advances  was  due  to  the  invention  of  money,  the 
providing  a  medium  for  which  any  saleable  thing  may 
be  exchanged,  with  which  any  purchasable  thing  may  be 
bought.  As  soon  as  a  shell,  or  a  hide,  or  a  bit  of  metal 
was  recognised  as  having  universal  convertibility,  all  the 
delays  and  discounts  of  barter  were  at  an  end.  In  the 
world  of  physics  and  chemistry  the  corresponding  medium 
is  electricity ;  let  it  be  produced  as  readily  as  it  produces 
other  modes  of  motion,  and  human  art  will  take  a  stride 
forward  such  as  when  Volta  disposed  his  zinc  and  silver 
discs  together,  or  when  Faraday  set  a  magnet  moving 
around   a   copper   wire. 

For  all  that  the  electric  current  is  not  as  yet  produced  as 

economically  as  it  should  be,  we  do  wrong  if  we  regard  it 

as  an  infant  force.      However  much  new 

Electricity  not  an  knowledge  may  do  with  electricity  in  the 
Infant-  laboratory,  in  the  factory,  or  in  the  ex- 

change, some  of  its  best  work  is  already 
done.  It  is  not  likely  ever  to  perform  a  greater  feat  than 
placing  all  mankind  within  ear-shot  of  each  other.  Were 
electricity  unmastered  there  could  be  no  democratic  govern- 
ment <»f  the  United  States.  To-day  the  drama  of  national 
affairs  is  more  directly  in  view  of  every  American  citizen 
than,  a  century  ago,  the  public  business  of  Delaware  could 
be  to  the  men  of  that  little  State.  And  when  on  the 
broader  stage  of  international  politics  misunderstandings 
,  let  us  note  how  the  telegraph  has  modified  the  hard- 
and-fast  rules  of  old-time  diplomat  y  To-day,  through  the 
columns  of  the  press,  the  facts  in  controversy  are  instantly 
published  throughout  the  world,  and  thus  so  speedily  give 


THE   WORLD    ONE   PARISH  257 

rise  to  authoritative  comment  that  a  severe  strain  is  put 
upon  negotiators  whose  tradition  it  is  to  be  both  secret  and 
slow. 

Railroads,  with  all  they  mean  for  civilisation,  could  not 
have  extended  themselves  without  the  telegraph  to  control 
them.  And  railroads  and  telegraphs  are  the  sinews  and 
nerves  of  national  life,  the  prime  agencies  in  welding  the 
diverse  and  widely  separated  States  and  Territories  of  the 
Union.  A  Boston  merchant  builds  a  cotton-mill  in  Georgia ; 
a  New  York  capitalist  opens  a  copper-mine  in  Arizona.  The 
telegraph  which  informs  them  day  by  day  how  their  invest- 
ments prosper  tells  idle  men  where  they  can  find  work, 
where  work  can  seek  idle  men.  Chicago  is  laid  in  ashes, 
Charleston  topples  in  earthquake,  Johnstown  is  whelmed  in 
flood,  and  instantly  a  continent  springs  to  their  relief.  And 
what  benefits  issue  in  the  strictly  commercial  uses  of  the 
telegraph !  At  its  click  both  locomotive  and  steamship 
speed  to  the  relief  of  famine  in  any  quarter  of  the  globe. 
In  times  of  plenty  or  of  dearth  the  markets  of  the  world  are 
merged  and  are  brought  to  every  man's  door.  Not  less 
striking  is  the  neighbourhood  guild  of  science,  born,  too, 
of  the  telegraph.  The  day  after  Rontgen  announced  his 
X  rays,  physicists  on  every  continent  were  repeating  his 
experiments — were  applying  his  discovery  to  the  healing  of 
the  wounded  and  diseased.  Let  an  anti-toxin  for  diphtheria, 
consumption,  or  yellow  fever  be  proposed,  and  a  hundred 
investigators  the  world  over  bend  their  skill  to  confirmation 
or  disproof,  as  if  the  suggestor  dwelt  next  door. 

On  a  stage  less  dramatic,  or  rather  not  dramatic  at  all, 
electricity  works  equal   good.      Its  motor  freeing  us  from 
dependence    on    the    horse   is    spreading 
our  towns  and  cities  into  their  adjoining         Social  Benefits, 
country.     Field  and  garden  compete  with 
airless  streets.      The  sunny  cottage  is  in  active  rivalry  with 
the  odious  tenement-house.      It  is  found  that  transportation 


258  ELECTRICITY— A    REVIEW 

within  the  gates  of  a  metropolis  has  an  importance  second 
only  to  the  means  of  transit  which  links  one  city  with 
another.  The  engineer  is  at  last  filling  the  gap  which  too 
long  existed  between  the  traction  of  horses  and  that  of 
steam.  In  point  of  speed,  cleanliness,  and  comfort  such  an 
electric  subway  as  that  of  South  London  leaves  nothing  to 
be  desired.  Throughout  America  electric  roads,  at  first 
suburban,  are  now  fast  joining  town  to  town  and  city  to 
city,  while,  as  auxiliaries  to  steam  railroads,  they  place 
sparsely  settled  communities  in  the  arterial  current  of  the 
world,  and  build  up  a  read}-  market  for  the  dairyman  and 
the  fruit-grower.  In  its  saving  of  what  Mr.  Oscar T.  Crosby 
has  called  "man-hours"  the  third-rail  system  is  beginning 
to  oust  steam  as  a  motive  power  from  trunk-lines.  Already 
shrewd  railroad  managers  arc  granting  partnerships  to  the 
electricians  who  might  otherwise  encroach  upon  their  divi- 
dends. A  service  at  first  restricted  to  passengers  has  now- 
extended  itself  to  the  carriage  of  letters  and  parcels,  and 
begins  to  reach  out  for  common  freight.  We  may  soon  see 
the  farmer's  cry  for  good  roads  satisfied  by  good  electric 
lines  that  will  take  his  crops  to  market  much  more  cheaply 
and  quickly  than  horses  and  macadam  ever  did.  In  cities, 
electromobile  cabs  and  vans  steadily  increase  in  numbers, 
furthering  the  quiet  and  cleanliness  introduced  by  the 
trolley   car. 

A   word  has  been  said  about  the  blessings  which   elec- 
tricity promises  to  country  folk,  yet  greater  are  the  boons 
it  stands  ready  to  bestow  in  the  hives  of 

Municipal    Electricity,     population.        Until      a     fcU      decades     agO 

the  water-supply  of  cities  was  a  matter 
not  of  municipal  but  of  individual  enterprise;  water  was 
drawn  in  large  part  from  wells  here  and  there,  from  lines  "t 
piping  laid  in  favoured  localities,  and  always  insufm  ient. 
Many  an  epidemic  of  typhoid  fever  was  due  to  the  con- 
tamination of  a  spring  by  a  cesspool  a  few  yards  away. 
To-day   a    supply   such    as   that   of   New    York    is  abundant 


HOPES    SOUND    AND   UNSOUND      259 

and  cheap  because  it  enters  every  house.  Let  a  central- 
ised electrical  service  enjoy  a  like  privilege,  and  it  will 
offer  a  current  which  is  heat,  light,  chemical  energy,  or 
motive  power,  and  all  at  a  wage  lower  than  that  of  any 
other  servant.  Unwittingly,  then,  the  electrical  engineer  is 
a  political  reformer  of  high  degree,  for  he  puts  a  new  pre- 
mium upon  ability  and  justice  at  the  City  Hall.  His  sole 
condition  is  that  electricity  shall  be  under  control  at  once 
competent  and  honest.  Let  us  hope  that  his  plea,  joined  to 
others  as  weighty,  may  quicken  the  spirit  of  civic  righteous- 
ness so  that  some  of  the  richest  fruits  ever  borne  in  the 
garden  of  science  and  art  may  not  be  proffered  in  vain. 
Flame,  the  old-time  servant,  is  individual ;  electricity,  its 
successor  and  heir,  is  collective.  Flame  sits  upon  the  hearth 
and  draws  a  family  together;  electricity,  welling  from  a 
public  source,  may  bind  into  a  unit  all  the  families  of  a 
vast  city,  because  it  makes  the  benefit  of  each  the  interest 
of  all. 

But  not  every  promise  brought  forward  in  the  name  of 
the  electrician  has  his  assent  or  sanction.  So  much  has 
been  done  by  electricity,  and  so  much 
more  is  plainly  feasible,  that  a  reflection  Baseless  Hopes, 
of  its  triumphs  has  gilded  many  a  baseless 
dream.  One  of  these  is  that  the  cheap  electric  motor,  by 
supplying  power  at  home,  will  break  up  the  factory  system, 
and  bring  back  the  domestic  manufacturing  of  old  days. 
But  if  this  power  cost  nothing  at  all  the  gift  would  leave 
the  factory  unassailed  ;  for  we  must  remember  that  power 
is  being  steadily  reduced  in  cost  from  year  to  year,  so  that 
in  many  industries  it  has  but  a  minor  place  among  the  ex- 
penses of  production.  The  strength  and  profit  of  the  fac- 
tory system  lie  in  its  assembling  a  wide  variety  of  machines, 
the  first  delivering  its  product  to  the  second  for  another 
step  toward  completion,  and  so  on  until  a  finished  article  is 
sent  to  the  wareroom.  It  is  this  minute  subdivision  of 
labour,  together  with  the  saving  and  efficiency  that  inure  to 


260  ELECTRICITY— A    REVIEW 

a  business  conducted  on  an  immense  scale  under  a  single 
manager,  that  bids  us  believe  that  the  factory  has  come  to 
stay.  To  be  sure,  a  weaver,  a  potter,  or  a  lens-grinder  of 
peculiar  skill  may  thrive  at  his  loom  or  wheel  at  home;  but 
such  a  man  is  far  from  typical  in  modern  manufacture. 
Besides,  it  is  very  questionable  whether  the  lamentations 
oxer  the  home  industries  of  the  past  do  not  ignore  evil  con- 
comitants such  as  still  linger  in  the  home  industries  of  the 
present  —  those  of  the  sweater's  den,  for  example. 

This  rapid  survey  of  what  electricity  has  done  and  may 
yet    do — futile    expectation    dismissed  —  has    shown    it    the 

creator  of  a  thousand  material  resources, 

a  New  and  Supreme   tue   perfecter   of  that  communication  of 

Resource.  things,  of   power,   of   thought,   which    in 

every  prior  stage  of  advancement  has 
marked  the  successive  lifts  of  humanity.  It  was  much 
when  the  savage  loaded  a  pack  upon  a  horse  or  an  ox 
instead  of  upon  his  own  back;  it  was  yet  more  when  he 
could  make  a  beacon-flare  give  news  or  warning  to  a  whole 
country-side,  instead  of  being  limited  to  the  messages  which 
might  be  read  in  his  waving  hands.  All  that  the  modern 
engineer  was  able  to  do  with  steam  for  locomotion  is  raised 
to  a  higher  plane  by  the  advent  of  his  new  power,  while  the 
long-distance  transmission  of  electrical  energy  is  contracting 
the  dimensions  of  the  planet  to  a  scale  upon  which  its  cata- 
racts in  the  wilderness  drive  the  spindles  and  looms  of  the 
ry  town,  or  illuminate  the  thoroughfares  of  cities. 
Beyond  and  above  all  such  services  as  these,  electricity  is 
the  corner-stone  of  physical  generalisation,  a  revealer  of 
truths  impenetrable  by  any  other  ray. 

The  subjugation  of  tire  has  done  much  in  giving  man  a 
new  independence  of  nature,  a  mighty  armour}'  against  evil. 
In  curtailing  the  most  arduous  and  brutalising  forms  of  toil, 
elei  tricity,  that  subtiler  kind  of  lire,  carries  this  emancipa- 
tion a  long  step  further,  and,  meanwhile,  bestows  upon  the 
poor  many  a  luxury  which  but  lately  was  the  exclusive  pos- 


FLAME   FAR   SURPASSED  261 

session  of  the  rich.  In  more  closely  binding  up  the  good 
of  the  bee  with  the  welfare  of  the  hive,  it  is  an  educator 
and  confirmer  of  every  social  bond.  In  so  far  as  it  proffers 
new  help  in  the  war  on  pain  and  disease  it  strengthens  the 
confidence  of  man  in  an  Order  of  Right  and  Happiness 
which  for  so  many  dreary  ages  has  been  a  matter  rather  of 
hope  than  of  vision.  Are  we  not,  then,  justified  in  holding 
electricity  to  be  a  multiplier  of  faculty  and  insight,  a  means 
of  dignifying  mind  and  soul,  unexampled  since  man  first 
kindled  fire  and  rejoiced? 

We  have  traced  how  dexterity  rose  to  fire-making,  how 
fire-making  led  to  the  subjugation  of  electricity.  Much  of 
the  most  telling  work  of  fire  can  be  better  done  by  its  great 
successor,  while  electricity  performs  many  tasks  possible 
only  to  itself.  Unwitting  truth  there  was  in  the  simple 
fable  of  the  captive  who  let  down  a  spider's  film,  that  drew 
up  a  thread,  which  in  turn  brought  up  a  rope — and  freedom. 
It  was  in  1800,  on  the  threshold  of  the  nineteenth  century, 
that  Volta  devised  the  first  electric  battery.  In  a  hundred 
years  the  force  then  liberated  has  vitally  interwoven  itself 
with  every  art  and  science,  bearing  fruit  not  to  be  imagined 
even  by  men  of  the  stature  of  Watt,  Lavoisier,  or  Hum- 
boldt. Compare  this  rapid  march  of  conquest  with  the  slow 
adaptation,  through  age  after  age,  of  fire  to  cooking,  smelt- 
ing, tempering.  Yet  it  was  partly,  perhaps  mainly,  because 
the  use  of  fire  had  drawn  out  man's  intelligence  and  culti- 
vated his  skill  that  he  was  ready  in  the  fulness  of  time  so 
quickly  to  seize  upon  electricity  and  subdue  it. 

Electricity  is  as  legitimately  the  offspring  of  fire  as  fire 
of  the  simple  knack  in  which  one  savage  in  ten  thousand 
was  richer  than  his  fellows.  The  principle  of  permutation, 
suggested  in  both  victories,  interprets  not  only  how  a  vast 
empire  is  won  by  a  new  weapon  of  prime  dignity ;  it 
explains  why  such  empires  are  brought  under  rule  with 
ever-accelerated  pace.  Every  talent  only  pioneers  the  way 
for  the  richer  talents  which  are  born  from  it. 


CHAPTER    XIX 
THE   THRESHOLD    OF    PHOTOGRAPHY 

IN  two  remarkable  cases  we  have  seen  how  possessions  at 
first  prized  for  one  quality  have,  quite  incidentally,  dis- 
closed another  which  in  the  end  has  become  of  paramount 
importance.      The  savage,  his   attention 
The  incidental  may    .riveted  upon  the  sharpness  of   his  flints 

become   Para-  r  .   .       ,  .       .  . 

mount  tor  arrows,  chisels,  or   knives,   for  ages 

glanced  incuriously  when  a  stone  in  its 
flaking  struck  out  sparks.  Yet  in  kindling  fire  the  flint  did 
man  a  loftier  service  than  when  it  pointed  a  spear,  or  gave 
edge  to  a  saw  or  a  sword.  When  stone  had  given  way  to 
bronze,  and  bronze  in  turn  was  displaced  by  iron,  the  metal 
at  first  was  esteemed  for  its  strength  alone.  That  small 
masses  of  it  found  here  and  there  should  be  lodestones  was 
singular,  but  nothing  more;  the  fact  for  ages  lay  barren  of 
either  worth  or  meaning.  To-day,  as  electric  art  passes 
from  one  new  province  to  another  in  the  expansion  of  its 
empire,  the  query  is  whether  the  strength  or  the  magnetism 
of  iron  is  its  chief  quality. 

Let  us  observe  for  a  moment  human  activity  in  the  broad 
contrasts  of  the  necessary  toil  of  work,  and  the  chosen  toil, 
often  more  arduous,  of  play.  Modern  athletes  in  training 
for  a  boat  race  or  a  foot-ball  match,  sportsmen  in  stalking 
Rocky  Mountain  sheep  or  hunting  the  big  game  ol  India, 
show  us  a  reversion  to  a  primal  instinct  as  they  undertake 
lalx  airs  and  undergo  hardships  of  extreme  severity  for  sheer 

262 


REPRESENTATION    BEGINS  263 

delight  in  their  sport.  And  in  such  joy  of  old,  not  less  than 
in  deliberate  exercise  of  skill,  did  human  art  begin.  When 
a  primitive  armourer  had  finished  making  a  cudgel  he  ex- 
pressed his  unexhausted  sense  of  power,  his  delight  in  form 
and  colour,  by  daubing  the  wood  with  bands  of  ochre,  by 
carving  upon  it  rude  waves  and  rounds.  If  he  shaped  and 
sharpened  a  knife  he  added  a  few  incised  flourishes,  to  pro- 
claim that  there  should  be  beauty  as  well  as  use  in  the 
thing  that  he  had  made.  This  overbrimming  of  the  cup  of 
life  had  other  manifestations  :  the  early  artist  scrawled  upon 
the  walls  of  caves,  or  at  the  base  of  cliffs,  profiles  as  crude 
as  those  which  boys  to-day  chalk  upon  barns  and  fences. 
Sometimes  he  pressed  and  patted  a  dollop  of  clay  into  a 
human  image  at  first  so  rude  that  we  wonder  whether  he 
meant  to  make  an  idol  or  a  doll,  an  object  of  worship  or  a 
plaything  for  a  child. 

Who  can  retrace  at  this  late  day  the  hint  or  push  that 
impelled  him  to  all  this?  It  may  have  been  in  staining  or 
painting  his  own  body  that  skill  was  acquired  for  his  sim- 
ple patterns,  his  repeated  strokes  and  curves.  His  first 
essay  in  plastic  art  may  have  been  incited  by  the  impress 
left  on  wet  clay  when  a  leaf,  or  nut,  was  lifted  from  the 
ground.  Whatever  the  material,  whether  sand,  or  clay,  or 
common  earth,  whether  spread  or  moulded  with  twig, 
splintered  bone,  or  shell,  the  moment  a  likeness  of  leaf  or 
fruit,  of  man  or  beast,  was  wrought  faithfully  enough  for 
recognition  by  another  eye,  a  new  morning  dawned  for  the 
human  soul.  What  had  begun  in  sportive  outlines,  in  mere 
idle  ornament,  took  root  for  a  thousand  harvests  of  use  and 
beauty.  Then  arose  the  art  of  Representation,  the  putting 
sign  for  substance,  semblance  for  reality,  the  betokening  a 
thing  by  its  swiftly  created  outline  or  image.  Thence  have 
sprung  sculpture,  painting,  writing,  printing — throughout 
their  later  course  advancing  with  equal  pace  beside  that 
consummate  symbolism,  articulate  speech. 


264     THRESHOLD    OF    PHOTOGRAPHY 


Fig.  80. 
Carving  from  the  caves  of  the  Dordogne  Valley,  France. 


Of  imitative  art  in  its  first  unsteady  steps  few  traces  have 
been  unearthed  :  favoured  by  the  durability  < >f  their  material, 
some  of  the  best  portrayals  known  are  among  the  oldest. 
In  the  caves  of  the  Dordogne  Valley,  in  southern  France, 
there  dwelt  in  the  days  of  the  now  long-extinct  mammoth, 
hunters    who    were  artists   t<><>.     Their    carvings   on    bone 


PRIMITIVE   PICTURES  265 

depict  deer  and  horses  with  a  force  and  freedom  that  would 
do  credit  to  modern  pencils  (Fig.  80).  But  depictive  art 
in  stages  lowly  in  comparison  with  the 

Dordogne     Carvings     WOuld      gladden     itS     Primitive  Delineation. 

rude  beholders,  and  spur  the  talent  of 
every  man  who  had  it  in  him  to  draw,  or  paint,  or  carve 
with  more  than  common  dexterity.  There  was  use  as  well 
as  delight  in  these  creations,  for  all  their  crudity.  The 
roughly  hewn  totem  or  emblem,  bear,  crow,  or  dog,. pro- 
tected the  property  of  an  Indian  chief  or  priest  as  securely 
as  if  he  himself  stood  on  guard.  From  such  unwitting 
heraldry,  from  the  execution  of  individual  portraits  of  war- 
rior and  leader,  the  artist  rose  to  a  composition  which 
depicted  a  battle  or  a  hunt—  at  first,  we  may  be  sure,  with 
little  other  success  than  to  provide  an  aid  to  the  memory 
of  annalists,  to  keep  in  remembrance  the  proud  traditions 
that  descended  from  father  to  son  (Fig.  81). 

Both  pictures  and  figures  grew  better  as  their  creators 
gained  practice,  and  as  they  became  more  expert  in  the 
grinding  of  pigments,  or  in  the  use  of  tools  borrowed  from 
humbler  arts,  or  expressly  devised  for  the  primitive  studio. 
Thus  it  came  about  at  last  that  the  recorder,  the  priest, 
the  seer,  was  no  longer  a  mere  speaker  who  had  to  be 
present  when  he  told  his  story.  Ages  after  his  death  his 
pictures,  images,  reliefs,  remained  to  echo  his  voice  to  men 
who  had  never  looked  upon  his  face,  and  this,  perchance, 
on  shores  many  leagues  removed  from  the  artist's  home  or 
grave.  Art  had  begun  its  victory  over  time  and  space. 
Knowledge  could  now  be  accumulated  as  never  before :  in 
much  a  man  might  now  begin  where  his  father  had  left  off. 
Of  the  excellence  to  which  American  aboriginal  art  rose 
in  its  latest  pictures  and  pictographs,  we  have  hundreds  of 
examples  in  the  volumes  of  Schoolcraft,  and  Catlin,  and  of 
the  United  States  Bureau  of  Ethnology.  While  primitive 
art  was  quietly  opening  a  door  to  new  and  refined  pleasures 


Fig.  8i. 

(From   II.   K.  Schoolcraft,  History,  Condition,  and  Prospects  of  the  Indian 
Tribes  of  the  United  States.     Philadelphia,  1S54,  Vol.  IV,  p.  253,  plate  32.) 


Taken  from  the  shoulder-blade  of   a   buffalo    ("mind   on   the    plains   in    the    Comanche 
count'      .1  the  strife  for  the  buffalo  existing  between  the  Indian 

and  m  hib  1  back  protected  by  hia  shield 

and  armed  with  a  lance,  kills  a  Spaniard  (  |),the  lattei  being  armed  with  a  gun, 
after  a  circuitous  chase  (6).  I  he  Spaniard's  companion  (4),  armed  with  a  lance, 
is  also  killed.      I  lie  sun  is  depicted  by  2,  the  buffalo  by  5. 


A   NEW   DEPARTURE  267 

of  the  eye,  it  was  conferring  new  values  upon  old  utilities. 
The  art  which  could  indicate  a  path  of  safety  or  the  vicinity 
of  a  foe,  point  to  hidden  stores  of  food  or  springs  of  refresh- 
ing water,  did  quite  as  much  for  the  safety  and  comfort 
of  primitive  man  as  his  rude  stone  hammer  or  even  the 
chance-kindled  flame  which  his  roving  eye  might  discern  as 
it  glimmered  in  the  distance. 

However  far  draughtsmen,  illuminators,  painters,  etchers, 
may  have  carried  verisimilitude,  there  was  no  essential  advance 
in  imitative  art  down  to  the  first  decade 
of  the  nineteenth  century.      All  the  com-    Primitive  Representa- 

r  .  ,       .        tion  Held  its  Path  till 

pany  of  artists,  recent  and  remote,  glon-  a  Hundred  Years  Ago. 
ous  and  inglorious  alike,  from  the  earliest 
to  the  latest,  had  but  one  method  in  copying  nature — to 
express,  line  by  line,  stroke  by  stroke,  what  their  eyes  saw 
before  them.  Their  vision  might  be  distorted  or  dull,  their 
brains  careless  or  unfaithful  in  allying  eye  with  hand;  their 
fingers  might  be  clumsy,  their  tools  or  pigments  faulty  or 
inadequate.  By  all  this  did  reproduction  fall  short  of  its 
original,  or  erroneously  surpass  it,  and  set  down  falsity  in- 
stead of  truth.  It  was  left  for  the  nineteenth  century  to 
make  the  faithful  touch  of  light  limn  its  own  impressions 
with  more  and  more  accuracy  of  form  and  of  colour,  with 
illusions,  too,  of  relief  and  motion,  while  images  which  find 
no  response  in  the  eye  are  in  a  most  indirect  and  aston- 
ishing manner  disclosed  to  sight.  As  Photographer  man 
enters  upon  a  new  career  as  Initiator,  reserving  for  his 
hand  and  eye  those  high  tasks  which  they  alone  may  ac- 
complish, deputing  to  the  retina  of  the  camera,  to  the  play 
of  chemic  affinity,  the  labour  of  seizing  every  radiance  of 
the  earth  and  sky. 

Electric  science  and  art  swing  upon  a  hinge  of  iron. 
Were  it  not  for  the  ease  and  celerity  with  which  iron  can 
take  on  magnetism  and  let  it  go,  there  would  be  no  electro- 
magnet as  the  core  of  the  telegraph  instrument,  the  tele- 


I  IIKI  SHOLD   OF    PHOTOGRAPHS 

phone,  the  dynamo,  and   the  motor.     In   some  degrei 
other  all  substances  arc  magnetic,  but  most    of  them   in  a 
degi  trifling  as  virtually  to  possess 

A  Pivot  of  Silver.  IK  >     mag  IH'l  i-lll    whatever.         Nickel,  which 

in  the  magnetic  hierarchy  stands  next  to 
iron,   has    but    one-sixtieth    its    atlr.i  wer.       While 

trie  art  thus  turns  upon  a  hinge  of  iron,  photography 
revolves   upon   a   pivot    of    silver.       All    sub  me- 

tallic compounds  especially,  are  responsive  to  li.^ht — are 
altered  by  it  in  constitution,  with  an  accompanying  change 
lour.  Vet  so  pre-eminent  in  this  sensitive  quality  are 
the  salts  of  silver  that  without  them  it  is  unlikely  that  we 
should  have  any  photography  at  all.  The  chameleon  na- 
ture- of  silver  compounds  is  foreshown  in  silver  as  a  simple 
element;  it  occurs  in  three  forms,  each  of  distinct  hue  It 
stencils  are  laid  upon  a  polished  silver  plate  and  exposed  to 
direct  sunshine  for  two  to  three  hours,  an  image  may  be 
developed  by  mercury  vapour,  as  in  the  Daguerre  method, 
or  by  such  a  bath  as  that  used  for  wet  collodion  pi 
Combined  with  one  and  the  same  proportion  of  bromine, 
silver  displays  six  div<  f  molecular  architecture, 

each   having  a  characteristic  tint.      In  the   highly  complex 
structures    which    silver    forms   with    other    proportioi 
bromine,   nitrogen,    chlorine,    or    iodine,    its    union 
unstable  as  to  be  dissevered  by  a  weightless  ray  iA  light, 
and  this  in  many  cases  in  the  fraction  of  a  second.      Fortu- 
nately,  this  molecular  shattering,   for  all   its  swiftness,  is 
nmonly    attended    by   decided    alterations  of   colour. 
Nature's  own   laboratory  was  tin-   photographer's  ante- 
room.    Generations  before  his  ait  was  so  much  as  a  dream 

the    mimrs    at    Freiberg,    in    Germany, 

A  Hint  from  the  Mine,     hail  CoUH'    Upon    small   llllllpS   of   oiewlluh 

ited  their  keen  curiosity.      In  hue  and 
texture  it  resembled  whitish  horn;  in  the  fire  it  disengi 
silver:  so  it  was  called  horn-silver.      1 1 >  remarkable  pecu- 
liarity was  that  when  brought  into  daylight  it^  hue  com- 


THE    FINGER    OF   LIGHT 


l()() 


menced  al  o])cc  to  change  to  violet.  In  due  season  il  was 
proved  to  be  silver  chloride  and  was  successfully  imitated 

h\    i  hemic  art,       lis  cousin,  silver  nili. ill',  familiar  as  lunar 

caustic,   had  long   been   noted  for  a  kindred  trait:    when 

moistened   and  spread   upon   (he    skin,  or    Other  Surface,   its 

transparency  was  quickly  changed  to  opaque  blackness  as 
organic  salts  were  formed.  This  power  ol  light  upon  sil- 
ver compounds  was  a  strong  hint  to  many  an  ingenious 
mind  a  century  ago.  Among  them  were  Schultze,  in  Gei 
many,  and  Wedgwood,  in  England,  who  saw  thai  here  lay 
the  promise  of  copying  outlines  by  the  finger  ol  lighl  itself, 
Moth  ot  them  pressed  leaves,  fern-fronds,  and  flowers  upon 

paper  saturated   with  silver  solution,  and    allowed  sunshine 

to  fall  upon  the  paper  and  the  objects  laid  upon  it.     Then, 

for  the  first  time  since  man  appeared 
upon   earth,  his   hand  and   eve   were 

freed  from  the  drudger)  ol  catching 

a  contour.  1  lis  eye,  how  e\  ei  poor  in 
observation,  his  hand,  let  it  lack  skill 

as  it  might,  sufficed  to  bring  to- 
gel  her  the  object  to  be  outlined  and 

the  sensitn  e  paper ;  he  could  then 
intrust  to  light  the  remainder  <*i  the 
work  (Fig.  82).  Here  was  just  such 
an  epoch  making  feat  as  t he  inten- 
tional kindling  of  a  blaze,  or  the  de 

liberate   rubbing  ^i  amber  tO  educe  electricity;    power  of  a 

new  order  began  to  spread  its  vistas  to  the  eye  and  the 

mind  ol   man. 

One  stumbling-block   al  the  very  oiitset  ol   the  process 

tin  eaten  ed   to  be  fatal !    no  sooner  w  I as   the  protected  part   of 

the  paper  withdrawn  from  the  shadow  ol  the  object  laid 
upon  it  to  be  copied  than  the  lighl  proceeded  to  blacken 
every  portion  ^(  the  surface  nol  black  already,  Lighl 
created  a  picture,  and  at  once  wroughl  its  ruin.  'The  ob- 
vious  need    was  a   solvent   for  the   silver  compound   win.  h 


Fio.  82. 

Maple  i<:ii  outlined  on 

si  h  itive  papei , 


2-o     THRESHOLD    OF    PHOTOGRAPHY 

remained    unchanged   in   the   part   of  the  paper  protected 

from  the  light,  so  that  the  silver  might  thence  be  removed, 

leaving  the   light  no  opportunity  to  do 

The  outlines  are  harm.  With  such  aid  from  the  chemist 
Detained.  an  unchangeable  imageof  the  thing  c<  >pied 

would  be  left  behind.  In  this  emer- 
gency Fox-Talbot  was  fortunate  enough  to  discover  that  a 
strong  solution  of  common  salt  was  effectual.  Rut  a  sol- 
vent much  to  be  preferred  to  sodium  chloride  is  sodium 
thiosulphite,  first  used  by  Sir  John  Herschel  in  1839,  al- 
though he  had  ascertained  its  powers  twenty  years  before, 
—  when  it  was  called  sodium  hyposulphite,  a  name  which 
the  compound  still  commonly  bears.  Notwithstanding 
many  an  attempt  to  replace  it,  sodium  thiosulphite  meets 
the  needs  of  fixation  to-day  as  it  did  when  first  he  em- 
ployed it.  With  assured  touch  and  new  confidence  our 
copyists  then  reproduced  engravings,  etchings,  manu- 
scripts, attaining  successes  which  made  them  bolder  still. 
The}-  learned  much  by  the  way  concerning  the  best  periods 
for  exposure,  the  soundest  methods  for  fixing  and  toning 
prints,  the  care  and  cleanliness  inexorable  even  for  the 
rudiments  of  photographic   manipulation.1 

Rut  copying  by  contact  is  a  narrow  business,  after  all, 
and  its  adepts  soon  grew  tired  of  it.  Why  should  not 
light  be  impressed  into  taking  pictures  directly  from  the 
face  of  nature  herself?  To  every  question  its  answer.  At 
this  juncture  there  arrived  a  reinforcement  from  a  quarter 
remote  indeed  from  the  chemist's  laboratory.      Ever  since 

1  In  remarkable  contrast  with  the  first  mode  (if  photographic  copying  is  the 

rption  "  method  shown  l>y  Mr.  J.  Il>>rt   Player  at  the    Royal    Photo- 

graphi  exhibition,  London,  September,  1899.     Tliis  method  is  to 

in  etching,  a  mezzotint,  a  picture,  or  document  of  any  kind   with  its 

ad  lay  upon  it  in  close  contact  the  sensitive  surface  ol  a  piece 

of  bromide  p  reen   light.     On  development  this 

furnishes  :i  negative  from  which  prints  are  obtained  in  the  usual  way.     Surely 

it  can  <>nly  have  been  by  the  rarest  instinct  for  experiment  that  the  discoverer 

came  upon  so  unforeseeable  an  effect  as  this. 


THE   CAMERA    ADOPTED  271 

keyholes   have   admitted   sunbeams   into   porches,  lobbies, 
and  rooms  otherwise  dark,  they  have  projected  images  of 
surrounding  scenery,  of  the  panorama  of 
passing  life,  full   of  charm   and  beauty.       The  Photographic 

.  .  ii-i  Camera  is  In- 

To  Giambattista  della  rorta,  who  lived  vented, 

in  Italy  three  centuries  ago,  these  im- 
ages were  no  idle  marvel ;  they  said,  Repeat  the  con- 
struction of  this  dark  room,  only  make  it  smaller  so  that  it 
may  be  easily  carried  about,  and  sharpen  its  pictures  by 
putting  lenses  in  the  aperture  through  which  your  light 
streams  in.  When  Porta  had  done  all  this  he  had  made 
the  camera  obscura,  an  instrument  popular  from  his  day 
almost  down  to  our  own  with  scene-painters  and  other 
artists  who  wished  either  to  portray  a  striking  bit  of  land- 
scape, or  to  enrich  their  portfolios  with  vignettes  for  ideal 
compositions.  We  can  well  imagine  these  men  toiling  at 
outline  and  tint,  shadow  and  shade,  devoutly  wishing  for 
some  plan  by  which  they  might  secure  once  for  all  the 
delicate  hues,  the  refined  half-tones,  so  elusive  to  pencil 
and  brush.  Their  longing  was  to  be  fulfilled,  but  only 
after  many  days. 

Fortunately  there  was  a  pioneer  in  breaking  away  from 
mere  copying  by  contact,  an  experimenter  of  genius,  who 
was  at  once  familiar  with  the  camera  and  its  images,  and 
with  the  chemical  effects  of  the  solar  ray.  His  prede- 
cessors had  availed  themselves  of  the  alterations  of  colour 
which  accompany  the  chemical  changes  due  to  an  imping- 
ing beam  of  light.  He  proceeded  upon  a  different  and 
quite  original  path.  He  ascertained — it  is  not  known  how — 
that  exposure  to  light  effected  a  remarkable  change  in  the 
solubility  of  asphalt,  a  film  of  which  kept  in  the  dark  was  as 
easily  dissolved  in  essential  oils  as  common  salt  in  water, 
but  after  a  few  hours'  exposure  to  sunshine  resisted  the 
action  of  these  oils  as  stoutly  as  so  much  stone.  In  18 16, 
in   an   hour   momentous   for  human  art,  Nicephore  Niepce 


272  THRESHOLD  OF  PHOTOGRAPHY 

placed  an  asphalt  plate  within  a  camera,  and  photography 
— as  we  know  it — began.  The  film  having  been  "exposed," 
then  removed  from  the  camera  and  bathed  in  oil,  showed 
a  clear  and  beautiful  image  in  low  relief. 

The  structure  and  office  of  the  eye  had  now  been  imitated 
in  such  wise  as  to  extend  vision  far  beyond  the  narrow 
horizons  of  sight.  Mark  the  fidelity  of  the  imitation: 
the  eye  has  its  lid,  the  camera  lenses  their  cap;  the  iris  of 
the  operator  is  repeated  in  his  diaphragm ;  the  aqueous 
and  vitreous  humours  of  the  eye-ball  so  complement  each 
other  in  their  qualities  of  refraction  and  dispersion  as  to  be 
achromatic,  and,  thanks  to  Dollond,  a  like  result  follows 
the  combination  of  crown-  and  flint-glass  in  the  lenses. 
Physiologists,  indeed,  are  persuaded  that  when  we  see  an 
object,  the  impression  is  due  to  a  succession  of  evanescent 
images  formed  so  rapidly  upon  the  retina  as  to  seem  one 
picture;  the  silvered  plate  of  modern  photography  is  there- 
fore deemed  only  a  retina  having  an  impressibility  which 
is  lasting  instead  of  transient.  What,  then,  is  invention  in 
its  furthest  reaches  but  imitation?  It  is  only  by  faithfully 
following  the  footprints  of  nature  that  the  inventor  attains 
the  point  where  he  traces  them  no  more,  beyond  which 
the  scientific  imagination  is  his  only  guide. 

It  was  in  the  combination  of  two  lines  of  experiment,  each 
of  them  of  a  high  order,  that  Nie'pce  stood  forth  as  one  of 
the  greatest  inventors  of  all  time.  He  united  his  camera 
with  a  sensitive  plate  for  a  fruitfulness  almost  worthy  to 
rank  with  that  which  has  followed  upon  the  achievement 
of  Volta,  or  upon  the  deed  of  the  hero  who  first  made  fire 
his  bond-servant.  Sight,  thanks  to  Niepce,  now  came  to 
its  final  supersedure  of  touch.  There  was  a  time  in  the 
earliest  history  of  the  globe  when  touch  was  the  one  sense 
which  distinguished  organic  life;  the  amoeba  remains  to 
tell  ns  how  simple  that  life  was.  In  fresh-water  ponds  and 
ditches    the    microscope    reveals    this    animalcule  —  which 


THE    HAND   SUPERSEDED  273 

stands  lowest  on  the  ladder  of  life.  Destitute  of  sight,  it 
thrusts  out  its  finger-like  projections  for  food — which  it 
absorbs  rather  than  digests  (Fig.  83).  Perchance,  begin- 
ning with  creatures  as  humble  as  this,  light 
slowly  created  the  eye,  so  that  at  last  ani- 
mals could  know  about  external  things 
without  having  to  touch  them.  Contrast 
such   an    animal,  however  lowly,  with  the  Fig.  83. 

amoeba  possessed  of  the  single  sense  of  Amoeba,  much  en- 
touch,  and  note  the  incalculable  advantage  ar§e 
of  being  able  to  detect  food,  or  enemies,  or  discern  shel- 
ter, beyond  the  range  of  mere  contact.  No  small  part  of 
the  gulf  between  man  and  amoeba  consists  in  man  being 
able  to  know  infinitely  more  through  his  eye  than  by  his 
hand.  Sight  presents  him  with  an  illimitable  universe  in- 
stead of  the  little  world  in  which  the  fingers  of  the  blind 
cautiously  grope.  Vision,  it  is  highly  probable,  began 
with  the  simple  power  to  discriminate  light  from  darkness, 
this  passing  into  ability  to  discern  outlines,  then  the  forms 
within  these  outlines  with  more  and  more  distinctness ; 
next  the  estimation  of  distances  might  follow,  with,  possibly, 
a  slow  but  constant  increase  in  the  perception  of  colours. 
A  development  which  demanded  ages  in  the  case  of  the 
eye,  was  repeated  in  but  a  few  years  as  that  artificial  eye, 
the  camera,  parted  with  one  imperfection  after  another, 
and  came  at  last  not  only  to  equal  almost  every  power  of 
vision,  but  to  attain  a  responsiveness  to  rays  that  fall  upon 
the  retina  as  idly  as  upon  a  stone. 

The  human  hand  has  had  no  higher  office  than  to  depict 
what  the  eye  can  see  ;  that  service  was  to  rise  to  a  plane 
loftier  still  on  the  memorable  day  when,  at  the  bidding  of 
Niepce,  it  obliged  light  to  print  its  own  images,  to  be 
limner  as  well  as  revealer.  Uncounted  ages  stand  between 
the  savage  who  first  streaked  himself  with  woad  or  ochre, 
and  the  artist  who  to-day  sketches  a  landscape  with  his 


274     THRESHOLD   OF    PHOTOGRAPHY 

pencil,  or  paints  a  portrait  with  his  brush.  When  once 
man  saw  the  feasibility  of  deputing  the  labour  of  represen- 
tation to  a  beam  of  light  his  progress  was  rapid ;  in  less 
than  a  century  he  has  virtually  perfected  his  art,  and  in 
many  tasks  of  simple  depiction  has  as  far  surpassed  the 
scope  of  brush  and  pencil  as  these  reach  beyond  the 
scrawls  and  smearings  of  the  cave-dweller. 

Niepce,  in  1829,  entered  into  partnership  with  Daguerre, 

a  scene-painter  who  had  attempted  in   an   original  way  to 

fix  the  beautiful  pictures  of  the  camera 

_.    _,  .-     ,      obscura.      Beginning  with  the  use  of  the 

The  Partnership  of  °  ° 

Daguerre.  resin  obtained  in  distilling  the  essence  of 

lavender,  he  had  discovered  that  a  sil- 
vered plate  sensitised  with  iodine  vapour  could  be  impressed 
by  a  luminous  image.  By  a  happy  accident,  such  as  be- 
falls only  him  who  deserves  it, — because  he  has  the  gift  of 
interpretation,  —  Daguerre  one  night  left  in  a  cupboard  an 
impressed  silver  plate.  Next  morning  he  was  delighted  to 
find  that  its  image  had  risen  to  full  visibility.  Looking 
about  for  the  cause  of  this  good  fortune,  he  noticed  a  dish 
of  mercury  on  the  shelf  where  the  plate  had  stood.  He  at 
once  suspected  the  mercury  to  be  the  "  developer,"  for  he 
knew  that  even  at  ordinary  temperatures  this  metal  gives 
off  vapour.  A  simple  test  confirmed  his  suspicion;  there 
and  then  was  established  the  photographic  art  of  "  develop- 
ment," an  art  with  generous  rewards  for  taste  as  well  as  skill. 
Development  as  the  work  of  heat  was  known  long  before 
the  time  of  Daguerre.  The  chemists  of  the  middle  ages 
were  ingenious  enough  to  make  an  ink  which  stained  the 
paper  no  more  than  water  as  it  left  the  pen;  on  warming 
the  inscribed  tablet  before  a  flame  its  secret  me- 
sprang  into  full  legibility.  In  a  mode  much  more  difficult 
to  follow,  light  has  effects  of  the  same  kind.  It  often 
works  a  chemical  change  unaccompanied  by  alteration  of 
hue,   but   let   the   photographed   surface   be   bathed   in   the 


Plate  VII. 


JOSEPH    XICliPHORE    XIEPCE. 


DIVISION    OF   LABOR  275 

right  developer,  and  a  further  rearrangement  of  molecules 
sets  in,  this  time  with  so  marked  a  change  of  colour  that  an 
image  emerges  to  view.  A  sketcher  cannot  delegate  to 
any  other  hand  than  his  own  a  single  line  or  stipple  of  his 
drawing;  the  whole  task  is  strictly  and  personally  his  own. 
In  the  fact  that  the  development  of  a  negative  may  be  in- 
trusted to  other  hands  than  those  which  seize  an  impres- 
sion there  enters  a  facility  wholly  new  in  representation. 
Its  work  now  falls  into  that  division  of  labour  which  has 
so  much  economised  effort  in  other  fields  of  toil.  In  many 
cases  the  task  of  development  requires  less  skill  than  the 
taking  of  a  picture,  and  in  all  cases  it  can  be  pursued  at 
leisure  and  without  the  difficulties  of  place  as  well  as  time 
which  may  so  severely  harass  the  photographer  afield. 

From  its  foundation  the  photographic  art  has  kept  in 
the  main  to  two  distinct  paths.  The  one  was  pioneered 
by  Niepce,  whose  plate  coated  with  asphalt  was  hardened 
by  the  touch  of  light,  so  that  a  solvent  left  behind  it  an 
image  in  low  relief.  The  second  path,  due  to  Wedgwood 
and  Fox-Talbot,  avails  itself  of  the  changes  of  colour 
wrought  by  light  as  it  rearranges  a  chemical  compound. 
In  the  roll  of  photographic  honour  Fox-Talbot  takes  rank 
immediately  next  to  Niepce  and  Daguerre.  To  him  we 
owe  a  refinement  which  effected  the  first  notable  reduction 
in  the  time  required  for  photography.  He  immersed  his 
paper  in  a  solution  of  common  salt,  and  then  on  one  side  of 
the  sheet  applied  a  solution  of  silver  nitrate.  This  resulted 
in  the  formation  of  a  silver  chloride  much  more  expeditious 
in  its  action  than  those  salts  formed  as  the  nitrate  combines 
with  the  sizing  of  the  paper.  In  respect  to  beauty,  the 
pictures  of  Daguerre  and  Fox-Talbot  remain  to  show  us 
how  an  art  may  spring  in  a  single  bound  to  admirable 
qualities.  Yet,  after  the  first  flush  of  enthusiasm  regarding 
the  new  solar  pictures,  there  succeeded  inevitable  and  just 
criticism  of  their  defects. 


CHAPTER  XX 

TRUTH  OF  FORM— THE  TRANSLATION  AND 
REPRODUCTION  OF  COLOUR 

rI^HE  lenses  of  the  first  cameras  were  guilty  of  serious 
distortions  of  form  :  the  image  of  a  cube  seemed  the 
portrait  of  a  warped  and  shrunken  cake  of  soap;  the  pro- 
truding hands  and  feet  of  a  sitter  were 
Accuracy  of  Form,  exaggerated  to  gigantic  proportions.  A 
succession  of  mathematicians  and  mas- 
ters of  optics,  from  Petzval  to  Ross,  Zeiss,  and  Goerz,  have 
so  improved  the  curves  of  these  lenses,  so  spaced  them 
apart,  so  balanced  their  divergencies  in  refractive  and  dis- 
persive quality,  as  to  leave  nothing  to  be  desired  that  is 
feasible  with  respect  to  form.  Substance  as  well  as  shape 
has  profitably  engaged  a  band  of  investigators  of  whom 
the  chief  is  Dr.  Schott  of  Jena.  His  first  trials  were  in 
adding  barium  silicate  to  the  usual  ingredients  of  glass, 
importing  a  refractive  and  dispersive  power  new  in  the 
glass-maker's  art,  and  producing  a  very  flat  field  with 
sharp  definition.  From  among  the  combinations  of  lenses 
now  offered  the  artist  and  the  amateur,  they  may  choose 
apparatus  suited  to  portraiture,  to  interior  views,  or  to 
landscapes,  confident  of  approaching  truth  in  their  results 
so  closely  that  the  divergence  from  it  i^  imperceptible.1 

1   R.   S.   Cole's    Treatise  on  Photographic  Optics,  London  and   New  Vork, 
[s   an   authoritative    work,    fully  illustrated,  and  giving  mathematical 
formulae. 

276 


Plate  VIII. 

LOUIS   JACQUES    MANDE    DAGUERRE. 

Retouched  from  an  injured  original  daguerreotype  in  the  U.  S.  National  Museum,  Washington. 


ILLUSION    OF   RELIEF  277 

The  camera  itself  has  undergone  improvement  not  less 
remarkable  than  the  rectification  of  its  lenses.  In  its  first 
estate  it  was  so  heavy  and  delicate  as  to  be  moved  with 
difficulty  and  risk.  With  rare  exceptions,  its  objects  had 
to  be  brought  before  it,  with  serious  restrictions  of  range. 
The  first  successful  camera  in  light  and  portable  form  was 
devised  by  Mr.  Kinnear,  an  English  amateur.  The  popu- 
lar instruments  of  the  bellows  and  folding  types  are  de- 
rived from  apparatus  invented  by  Mr.  W.  J.  Stillman,  in 
1867.  It  is  because  the  camera,  whether  portable  or  not, 
has  the  utmost  possible  precision  that  we  find  it  united 
with  the  telescope,  the  spectroscope,  and  the  microscope, 
with  the  happiest  issue,  as  we  shall  shortly  see.  A  camera 
with  accurate  lenses  not  only  enables  an  operator  to  per- 
form old  tasks  with  unwonted  facility :  it  confers  upon  him 
powers  wholly  new.  Let  us  begin  by  noting  his  novel  pro- 
duction of  the  illusion  of  relief,  and  then  pass  to  the  camera's 
facility  in  changing  the  proportions  of  a  picture. 

The  stereoscope  is  the  child  of  accurate  photography. 
Provided  with  two  views  which  have  the  same  slight  differ- 
ence as  those  received  by  the  two  eyes 
of  an  observer,  it  fuses  them  with  the  The  illusion  of  Relief, 
perfect  semblance  of  solidity.  The 
"Laocoon"  and  the  "Apollo"  of  the  Vatican,  the  sublime 
ellipse  of  the  Colosseum,  the  quaint  thoroughfares  of  Siena, 
Avignon,  and  Toledo,  return  to  the  traveller's  eye  in  vivid 
relief  as  he  sits  in  his  arm-chair  at  home  and  turns  the  axle  of 
a  stereoscope.  Very  few  painters  can  put  upon  their  canvases 
the  suggestion  of  solidity  offered  by  these  simple  pictures. 
To  ask  such  illusion  at  the  hands  of  a  draughtsman  were 
vain.  Through  the  camera  a  unique  bridge  is  here  thrown 
between  graphic  and  plastic  art.  As  if  by  magic,  a  fiat 
piece  of  paper  rises  to  the  three  dimensions  of  life,  and 
simulates  admirably  the  masterpieces  of  a  Phidias,  a 
Michelangelo,  a  Thorwaldsen. 


278  PHOTOGRAPHIC  TRUTH  OF  FORM 

Because  its  images  may  be  considerably  enlarged  with- 
out blurring,  or  loss  of  detail,  photography  bestows  a  new- 
resource    upon    both    science    and    art. 

Dimensions  Easily  Slides  of  a  size  that  may  be  readily 
slipped  into  the  pocket,  and  much  too 
minute  in  their  details  for  execution  by 
the  pencil,  bear  pictures  which  survive  in  precision  the 
exaggerations  of  the  stereopticon,  and  play  no  minor  part 
in  the  instruction  and  entertainment  of  the  time.  To  cite 
a  noteworthy  case:  every  winter  the  great  hall  of  the 
American  Museum  of  Natural  History,  in  New  York,  is 
thronged  with  audiences  attracted  by  illustrated  recitals  of 
travel,  of  exploration,  of  recent  advances  in  science.  A  series 
of  these  lectures  of  particular  importance  is  conducted  by 
the  Department  of  Public  Instruction  of  the  State  of  New 
York,  and  is  directed  by  Professor  A.  S.  Bickmore.  Here 
many  of  the  lecturers  are  men  of  science  who  take  part  in 
expeditions  for  the  express  purpose  of  informing  their  au- 
diences about  the  most  interesting  regions  of  their  own 
country  and  of  the  world.  Because  photographic  duplica- 
tion is  a  mattci'  of  but  trifling  expense,  these  lectures  are 
repeated  in  more  than  fourscore  towns  and  cities  of  the 
United  Slates  and  Canada,  chiefly,  of  course,  in  the  State 
of  New  York.  Every  considerable  museum  on  the  globe, 
whether  of  geology,  natural  history,  or  fine  art,  now  pieces 
out  the  story  of  its  specimens  with  a  collection  of  sterling 
photographs.  On  occasion  these  furnish  slides  for  the  stere- 
opticon as  a  means  of  illustration  impossible  before  to-day. 

Not  seldom  the  bold  enlargements  of  the  lantern  effect 
a  brilliant  revelation.  Hermann  Grimm,  in  the  Deutsche 
Rundschau  for  June,  [893,  gave  an  account  <>f  the  won- 
derful effects  elicited  by  the  stereopticon  as  a  means  ol 
teaching  the  history  of  art.  No  other  form  <>t  reproduc- 
ti<  in  seems  to  him  so  w  ell  qualified  to  bring  out  the  essential 
features  of  a  great  painting  or  etching  as  this.     Permitting 


REVELATIONS  OF   ENLARGEMENT     279 

one,  as  it  does,  to  enhance  the   proportions  of  a  work   at 
will,  it  brings  every  line  under  the  closest  scrutiny,  and  thus 
renders  to  the  student  the  service  which 
the   naturalist    derives   from    the    micro-      The  Lantern  as  a 
scope.     But  in  some  cases  the  aid  of  the  Reveaier. 

stereopticon  goes  yet  further.  Some 
works  of  art,  which  in  the  artist's  imagination  were  conceived 
in  colossal  dimensions,  he  was  prevented  from  carrying  out 
in  their  appropriate  grandeur.  Upon  these  the  lantern 
confers  their  true  proportions.  Grimm  illustrates  this  in 
a  conclusive  way  by  an  analysis  of  the  principal  works 
of  Diirer,  Holbein,  and  Rembrandt.  Diirer's  "  Knight, 
Death,  and  Devil,"  for  instance,  is  known  to  us  through 
an  engraving  a  few  inches  in  height.  This  Grimm  threw 
upon  the  screen,  and  at  once  it  loomed  up  before  him  in 
such  overwhelming  statuesqueness  that  it  was  perfectly 
clear  that  here  was  the  form  in  which  Diirer's  mind  origi- 
nally harboured  the  conception,  to  execute  which  in  its 
adequate  dimensions  he  found,  however,  no  opportunity. 
When,  in  like  manner,  the  "  Passion,"  the  "  Apocalyptic 
Visions,"  and  the  "  Adoration  of  the  Trinity  "  were  cast 
upon  the  screen,  they  seemed  to  expand  and  blossom  out 
into  fuller  life.  The  work  last  named  at  once  took  its 
place  by  the  side  of  Raphael's  "  Disputa."  Grimm  says: 
"  It  was  a  new  experience  for  me  thus  to  see  Diirer's 
works  at  once  enlarged  and  simplified.  The  master  stood 
before  me  as  one  redeemed.  It  seemed  to  me  as  though 
his  pictures  for  centuries  had  been  held  in  prison,  and  were 
only  now  freed  and  permitted  to  appear  what  they  really 
are."1 

With  lenses  reversed  the  precision  of  photography  be- 
stows another,  if  less  striking,  benefit  upon  the  artist.      We 

1  The  Little  Passion  of  Albert  Diirer,  with  an  introduction  by  Austin  Dob- 
son,  was  published  by  George  Bell  &  Sons,  London,  1894.  Its  reproductions 
might  all  be  enlarged  with  the  effect  remarked  by  Hermann  Grimm. 


280  PHOTOGRAPHIC  TRUTH  OF  FORM 

have  only  to  hold  an  opera-glass  wrong  end  to  the  eye  at  a 
theatre  to  see  the  roughly  executed  scenery  take  on  all  the 

delicacy  of  a  miniature.      On  this  help- 
Pictures  in  Miniature.  ful   principle  an  illustrator  dashes  off  a 

sketch  in  wash  or  crayon  on  a  sheet  of 
large  size,  leaving  the  camera  to  reduce  and  refine  his 
broad  effects  for  the  printing-block.  Both  the  illustrations 
and  the  manuscripts  of  the  Century  Dictionary  were 
brought  by  photography  to  microscopical  proportions  in 
order  that  copies  might  be  sent  to  three  separate  deposi- 
tories as  a  safeguard  in  case  of  fire.  Another  dictionary, 
originally  printed  in  large  type,  has  been  cheaply  repro- 
duced in  editions  of  less  ample  form  by  means  of  the 
camera,  dispensing  with  the  services  of  both  compositor 
and  proof-reader.  Ever  since  the  days  of  Solomon  it  has 
been  lamented  that  of  making  books  there  is  no  end. 
With  a  diminution  to  a  diameter  of  ._. „'„,,,  and  correspond- 
ingly to  an  area  of  .,,,,,,0,0011,  it  would  be  easy  to  carry 
away  the  National  Library  at  Washington  in  one  small 
volume.  This  reducing  power  of  photographic  lenses  has 
had  ingenious  applications  in  war.  During  the  siege  of 
Paris  in  1871,  the  London  Times  published  every  day 
a  page  of  advertisements  and  news  for  residents  of  the  be- 
leaguered city.  This  page,  contracted  by  photograph}-  to 
a  diameter  of  one  eight-hundredth  part,  printed  upon 
tissue-paper,  and  rolled  within  a  quill,  was  intrusted  to 
carrier-pigeons.  On  their  arrival  in  Paris  an  enlarging 
camera  brought  once  more  to  legibility  the  messages  of 
the  newspaper. 

The  applications  of  the  camera  to  the  microscope  have 
been  remarkably  gainful.  When,  however,  the  magnifica- 
tions exceed  1000  diameters  the  production  of  satisfactory 
photographs  has  always  been  a  matter  of  some  difficulty. 
Mr.  J.  E.  Barnard  and  Mr.  T.  A.  B.  Carver  have  suc- 
ceeded in  producing  photomicrographs  up  to  5000  diam- 


THE   ENGRAVER    INTERPRETS        281 

eters  by  using  a  simple  form  of  hand-fed  arc-lamp.      Its 
intense  light  has  two  pre-eminent  advantages:  it  proceeds 
from  a  surface  so  small  as  to  be  virtually 
a  point,  and  from  this  surface  the  rays     Application  to  the 
stream  forth  in  a  perfectly  even  illumina-  Microscope, 

tion.  A  brief  account  of  this  happy  alli- 
ance of  electrical  and  photographic  devices  appeared  in 
Nature,  Vol.  LVII,  p.  449.  It  is  accompanied  by  two 
illustrations,  in  neither  of  which  is  there  the  slightest  de- 
centration  so  common  when  the  oxyhydrogen  light  is 
employed.  With  moderate  magnification  and  a  quick 
plate,  more  than  one  investigator  has  revealed  the  inner 
structure  of  snow  crystals,  with  hints  for  the  study  of 
other  crystals  easily  deposited  from  various  solutions. 

In  addition  to  its  distortions  of  outline  the  early  photo- 
graph suffered  from  another  grave  fault — untruth  in  its  in- 
terpretation of  colour.     The  violets  of  a 

nosegay  were  as  if  white,  the  buttercups   Translation  of  colour 

,  .  .  1     •  1    -II     t_i     1         int0  Black  and 

and  geraniums  quite  as  decidedly  black.  white. 

A  good  engraver,  like  Miller,  when  he 
interprets  in  black  and  white  a  canvas  by  Turner,  takes 
pains  to  preserve  the  values  of  the  colours,  and  suggests  to 
the  best  of  his  ability  the  hues  of  the  palette  in  the  lines 
of  his  burin.  The  various  colours  of  the  spectrum  affect 
the  fibrils  of  the  retina  very  differently  from  their  action  on 
the  silver  salts  first  used  in  photography.  If  the  chemical 
theory  of  vision  be  true,  the  retinal  surface  is  built  up  of 
compounds  remote  indeed  in  character  from  those  which 
were  originally  used  by  Daguerre,  Fox-Talbot,  and  their 
confreres.  Red  and  violet  rays,  as  they  enter  the  eye, 
have  much  the  same  activity,  and  yield  sensations  differing 
but  little  in  strength.  But  as  long  ago  as  1777,  Scheele, 
a  Swedish  chemist,  found  that  violet  light  has  eighty  times 
more  effect  upon  silver  chloride  than  red  rays.  The  pho- 
tographer,  therefore,  was  loudly  bidden    so    to   vary  and 


282  COLOUR    IN    THE    CAMERA 

modify  his  chemicals  as  to  reduce,  or  even  abolish,  the 
immense  disparity  between  his  eye  and  his  plate  in  their 
responsiveness  to  the  gamut  of  colour.  In  this  difficult 
enterprise,  as  often  before  and  since,  the  flower  success 
grew  from  what  appeared  to  be  a  seed  of  failure. 

When  an  unreflecting  man  finds  an  undesired  property 
in  the  thing  he  works  with,  he  simply  casts  that  thing 
aside  and  thinks  no  more  about  it.  To 
a  Lesson  from  Failure,  an  inventive  mind  this  very  property 
may  suggest  a  new  use  for  which  a 
substance,  faulty  in  its  first  application,  may  be  exactly 
suited,  and  the  new  utility  may  far  overshadow  the  ser- 
vice required  at  first.  When  dyes  from  coal-tar,  Peruvian 
bark,  and  oils  began  to  be  manufactured,  they  had  a  pro- 
voking way  of  fading  out  of  their  fabrics  in  a  few  days,  or, 
under  strong  sunshine,  even  in  a  few  hours.  Usually,  too, 
the  more  brilliant  the  tints,  the  more  fleeting  the}*  proved. 
Their  evanescence  has  been  in  large  measure  overcome, 
but  before  it  yielded  to  the  resources  of  research,  a  re- 
markable series  of  experiments  took  place ;  for  what  is 
fading  in  sunshine  but  a  plain  advertisement  of  photo- 
graphic quality — a  susceptibility  to  change  of  colour 
under   the   impact   of   light? 

In  1873  Dr.  II.  W.  Vogel  of  Berlin  observed  that 
certain  of  his  photographic  plates  had  much  more  than 
ordinary  sensitiveness  to  green  rays,  and  he  remarked  that 
they  were  somewhat  reddish  in  hue.  Could  it  be  possible 
that  this  accident  of  colour  had  given  his  films  a  new  and 
most  desirable  sensibility?  He  at  once  procured  some  of 
the  most  fugitive  dyes  he  could  get  chinoline  and  pyridine 
dyes,  red,  violet,  and  blue.  lie  found,  to  his  delight,  that 
they  entered  into  chemical  combination  with  the  salts  of 
silver,  conferring  upon  his  plates  a  greatly  heightened  sus- 
ceptibility to  rays  which  before  had  scarcely  wrought  any 
effect  at  all.     A  plate  tinged  with  cyanin,  a  beautiful  blue 


Plate  IX. 
Red  Rose,  Yellow  Tulip,  and  Violets 
Photographed  on  an  Ordinary  Plate. 


The  same  on  an  Orthochromatic 
Plate. 


ORTHOCHROMATIC    PLATES  283 

dye,  had  surpassing  sensitiveness  to  orange  rays;  stained 
with  corallin,  a  compound  red  in  colour,  it  took  on  in  ad- 
dition a  high  impressibility  to  greenish  light.  Each  dye, 
let  us  note,  rendered  the  plate  responsive  to  the  rays  it 
absorbed — always  complementary  to  the  rays  it  reflected 
to  the  eye. 

Provided  with  an  orthochromatic  film,  manufactured 
according  to  the  Vogel  method,  a  photographer  may  now 
take  a  picture  of  a  variegated  parterre,  of  October  woods, 
of  a  lady  in  richly  coloured  costume,  with  a  near  approach 
to  truth  of  interpretation.  Despite  the  plate's  improve- 
ment drawn  from  dyes,  it  may  still  continue  to  be  too  im- 
pressible by  blue  and  viole.t  rays.  The  remedy  here  is  also 
due  to  Dr.  Vogel,  to  whom  the  value  of  a  red  pane  in  the 
window  of  a  "  dark  room  "  had  long  been  familiar  in  its 
interception  of  the  intensely  active  blue  and  violet  rays. 
In  one  of  his  early  experiments  he  placed  a  dark-blue  rib- 
bon on  a  piece  of  yellow  silk ;  interposing  a  yellow  screen 
between  these  objects  and  the  camera,  he  obtained  a  pic- 
ture in  which  the  ribbon  was  dark  and  the  silk  was  light — 
just  as  they  appeared  to  the  eye.  To-day  screens  are 
manufactured  in  a  wide  variety  of  tones ;  they  cut  off  the 
over-active  rays  during  part  of  an  exposure;  then,  for  a 
moment,  the  screen  is  taken  away  and  the  blue  and  violet 
rays  are  at  full  liberty  to  imprint  themselves.  The  ortho- 
chromatic  plate  is  of  particular  value  when  gas-  or  candle- 
light is  employed — comparatively  poor  in  the  more  active 
luminous  rays.  The  dyes  at  present  used  in  the  prepa- 
ration of  orthochromatic  plates  are  chiefly  eosin,  cyanin, 
azulin,  erythrosin,  azaleine,  and  croculein.  Botany  as  well 
as  chemistry  has  brought  its  sensitisers  to  the  camera :  so- 
lutions of  the  plantain  and  the  blue  myrtle  have  proved 
their  power  to  correct  the  colour  aberrations  of  the  silver 
image.  Plate  IX  shows  two  photographs  of  a  red  rose, 
a  yellow  tulip,  and   a  few   violets ;    the   first  photograph 


284  COLOUR    IN    THE    CAMERA 

was  taken  with  an  ordinary  plate,  the  second  with  an  or- 
thochromatic  plate. 

An  oil-painting  photographed  on  an  ordinary  plate  is 
like  a  badly  translated  poem  ;  but  little  of  its  beauty  sur- 
vives :  but  on  an  orthochromatic  plate 
Aids  to  Art  study.  the  rendition  is  so  just  that  for  the 
first  time  in  the  history  of  art  it  is  pos- 
sible to  compare  the  masterpieces  of  the  great  painters. 
To-day  a  connoisseur  places  side  by  side  in  his  cabinet  a 
series  of  copies  of  Raphael,  Velasquez,  Titian,  and  Rubens, 
and,  almost  as  if  the  original  canvases  were  assembled 
under  his  eye,  he  is  able  to  trace  the  development  of  each 
master's  successive  styles  and  understand  the  breadth  as 
well  as  the  distinction  of  his  genius.  For  the  great  artists 
of  Venice,  Titian,  Tintoretto,  Carpaccio,  and  Gentile  Bel- 
lini, whose  works  depend  much  more  upon  colour  than 
line,  the  orthochromatic  photograph  is  the  first  and,  indeed, 
the  only  adequate  reproduction.  The  most  noteworthy 
photographer  in  this  field  is  Mr.  Domenico  Anderson  of 
Rome.  "  Part  of  his  extraordinary  success,"  says  Mr.  Bern- 
hard  Berenson,  "  comes  from  the  fact  that  he  always  de- 
velops and  prints  his  pictures  himself,  and,  having  a  good 
artistic  memory,  he  is  able  to  bring  out  in  them,  by  careful 
exposure,  just  the  tone  that  best  recalls  the  original." 
Reviewing  the  whole  effect  of  such  photography  as  this 
upon  the  data  and  the  judgment  of  the  connoisseur,  Mr. 
Berenson  adds:  "  Printing  itself  could  have  hail  scarcely  a 
greater  effect  on  the  study  of  the  classics  than  photog- 
raphy is  beginning  to  have  on  the  study  of  the  old  masters." 
In  a  field  far  removed  from  that  of  fine  art,  the  ortho- 
chromatic plate  has  peculiar  value  to  the  astronomer.  In 
seizing  the  light  from  coloured  stars  in 
Aid  to  the  Astronomer,  the  telescope,  and  in  catching  the  hues 
of  stellar  spectra,  it  has  notably  ad- 
vanced his  studies  of  the  heavens.      It  is  not,  however,  in 


THREE    COLOURS   ENOUGH  285 

any  direct  issue,  but  in  affording  an  indirect  means  of  re- 
producing colour,  that  the  addition  of  dyes  to  silver  salts 
bears  its  richest  fruit. 

In  the  ordinary  printing  of  a  coloured  picture  there  is  a 
metal  block  or  a  lithographic  stone  for  every  hue.  A 
picture,  if  highly  variegated,  may  require 
as  many  as  twenty  different  blocks  or  Colour  Photography, 
stones,  as  it  passes  through  the  press, 
each  imparting  ink  of  a  particular  colour  to  the  printed 
sheet.  The  modern  analysts  of  light,  beginning  with  Dr. 
Thomas  Young,  have  pointed  a  way  to  a  simpler  method. 
He  demonstrated,  in  1802,  that  all  the  phenomena  of  colour 
may  be  explained  by  supposing  that  the  retina  contains 
three  orders  of  nerves,  each  sensitive  to  waves  of  a  certain 
length,  that  is,  to  a  particular  colour — red,  yellowish  green, 
or  violet.  He  assumed  that  all  other  colours  may  be  rec- 
ognised by  exciting  these  nerves  unequally.  His  theory 
received  full  confirmation  at  the  hands  of  Professor  Helm- 
holtz,  equally  great  as  an  investigator  in  physics  and  in 
physiology.  To  Professor  J.  Clerk-Maxwell  is  due  the 
suggestion  that  three  plates,  each  inked  with  a  fundamental 
colour,  might  replace  the  multiple  series  of  the  chromo- 
lithographer. 

From  among  the  many  attacks  upon  the  intricate  problem 
of  reproducing  colours  by  photograph)7,  as  based  upon  the 
three-colour  process,  it  may  suffice  to  choose  two  fairly 
typical  examples — the  first  the  method  of  composite  heli- 
ochromy, devised  by  Mr.  F.  E.  Ives  of  Philadelphia.  With 
a  camera  of  his  own  invention  he  takes  three  stereoscopic 
pairs  of  images,  similar  in  appearance  to  ordinary  uncoloured 
lantern-slides,  but  which,  by  differences  in  their  light  and 
shade,  represent  the  proportionate  distribution  of  the  re- 
spective three  primary  colours  in  the  object  photographed. 
The  three  negatives  are  usually  taken  on  a  single  plate  at 
one  exposure.      The  positive   is  made  by  contact-printing 


286 


COLOL'K    IN    THE    C'AMKRA 


in  the  usual  way  ;  the  glass  plate  is  then  cut  in  three  and 
mounted  on  a  special  hinged  frame,  designed  to  bring  the 
respective  pairs  of  images  into  position  in  the  kromskop 
("  kromskop  "  is  "  chromoscope  "  phoneticised).  In  the 
daytime  the  kromskop  is  used  in  front  of  a  window  illumi- 
nated by  the  light  of  the  sky.  At  night,  or  where  light  from 
the  sky  is  not  available,  two  Welsbach  burners,  suitably  ar- 
ranged, are  employed. 

The  construction  of  the  kromskop  is  outlined  in  Fig.  84. 
A,  B,  and  Care  red,  blue,  and  green  glasses,  against  which 

the  corresponding 
images  of  the 
colour  record  are 
placed.  Z?and  E 
are  transparent 
reflectors  of  col- 
oured glass.  F 
represents  the 
eye-lenses  for 

magnifying  the 
image.  Beyond 
£7 is  a  reflector  for 
illuminating  the 
images  at  C — 
those  at   A  and  B 

being  illuminated 
by  direct  light 
from  above.  The  operation  of  the  instrument  is  as  fol- 
lows: The  green  images  arc  seen  directly,  in  their  position 
at  C,  through  the  transparent  glasses  D  and  E.  The  blue 
images  arc  seen  by  reflection  from  tin'  surface  of  the  glass 
/-.,  which  makes  them  appear  to  occupy  the  same  position, 
and  in  fact  to  become  part  of  the  images  at    C.       In  the  same 

way  the  red  images  are  seen  by  reflection  from  the  surface 

of  the  glass  />,  and  also  appear  to  form  part  oi  the  images 


Fig.  84. 
Ives's  Kromskop, 


COLOUR   AND    RELIEF   UNITED      287 

at  C.  And  finally,  the  eye-lenses  at  FnoX.  only  magnify,  but 
cause  the  eyes  to  blend  the  two  images  which  constitute  the 
complete  stereoscopic  pair,  as  in  the  ordinary  stereoscope. 
The  result  is  a  single  image,  in  solid  relief,  with  the  closest 
approach  to  natural  colours  yet  attained  by  art.  In  an 
ordinary  photograph  we  plainly  see  that  the  gamut  of  light 
and  shade  is  much  narrower  than  in  nature, — the  picture 
is  relatively  too  flat  in  the  high  lights,  and  wanting  in  detail 
in  the  deep  shadows, — and  for  this  defect  the  eye  learns  to 
make  due  allowance.  The  same  fault  extends  to  the  Ives 
picture :  its  colours  at  times  appear  somewhat  bleached 
out  in  the  lighter  shades,  and  seem  too  dull  in  the  shadows. 
This  defect  is  not  noticeable  in  some  reproductions,  but 
seriously  detracts  from  the  beauty  of  others.  An  ordinary 
stereoscopic  picture,  with  its  lack  of  colour,  looks  more  like 
a  clay  model  than  anything  else.  Endowed  with  the  hues 
of  the  kromskop,  it  stands  forth  with  an  actuality  that 
marks  the  highest  reach  of  photographic  skill.  Mr.  Ives 
has  invented  a  lantern  for  the  projection  upon  a  screen  of 
his  three  images,  which  combine  with  exquisite  effect  both 
in  colour  and  in  the  illusion  of  relief. 

The  printer's  method  is  distinct  from  that  of  Mr.  Ives. 
Three  plates,  each  prepared  so  as  to  respond  to  a  single 
fundamental  hue,  are  in  turn  exposed  to  a  camera's  image 
of  a  coloured  object,  and  from  each  negative  a  positive  is 
produced  in  the  ordinary  way,  and  forms  a  plate  to  be 
inked  in  the  press  with  a  pigment  of  fundamental  colour. 
It  is  in  obtaining  pure  and  appropriate  pigments  that  the 
printer  meets  with  his  chief  difficulty ;  often  a  particular 
enamel,  rug,  tapestry,  or  oil-painting  is  reproduced  with 
a  happy  approximation  to  truth,  and  then  the  next  attempt 
proves  a  failure  because  the  combination  of  tints  is  not 
well  matched  in  the  printing  of  the  three  inks.  It  is  worth 
noticing,  as  we  pass,  that  in  some  three-colour  processes 
the  hues  chosen  are  red,  yellow,  and  violet-blue — yellow 


288  COLOUR    IN    THE   CAMERA 

taking  the  place  of  the  green  selected  by  Young  and  Helm- 
holtz.  With  whatever  choice  of  colours,  this  is  assuredly 
a  roundabout  way  of  making  a  rainbow  paint  itself,  but 
the  direct  transcriptions  of  colour  due  to  Becquerel  and 
Lippmann,  admirable  as  they  are,  have  all  the  limitations 
of  the  daguerreotype — they  do  not  lend  themselves  to 
duplication. 

The  most  satisfactory  means  of  laying  hold  of  colour,  as 
well  as  of  translating  it  into  black  and  white,  seems  to  lie 
in  the  adoption  of  dyes  once  worthless  from  their  fugitive 
quality.  When  German  chemists  a  few  years  ago  sought 
to  dye  silk  and  wool  permanently  with  certain  coal-tar 
compounds,  was  it  not  a  piece  of  rare  good  fortune  that 
they  failed  ?  When  the  first  silver  plate  all  too  eagerly 
yielded  to  the  violet  ray,  preferring  it  so  much  to  its  com- 
panion rays,  there  was  exasperation  for  the  printer  in  black 
and  white,  but  there  was  hope  for  the  artist  who  would 
recall  the  tints  of  the  autumn  woods,  the  procession  of  the 
flowers,  the  molten  gold  of  the  gates  of  sunset.  This  too 
active  violet  ray  provoked  the  photographer  into  making 
plates  with  sensitiveness  in  better  balance,  and  from  them 
are  directly  descended  the  plates  responsive  to  but  one 
primary  colour.  Limitations  mechanical  and  other  attend 
the  successful  execution  of  three-colour  illustration;  per- 
haps its  best  example  has  been  reached  in  the  picture-  of 
Dr.  W.  J.  Holland's  Butterfly  Book ,  where  textures  as  well  as 
tints  have  been  rendered  with  rare  fidelity.1  1  late  I  {frontis- 
piece) has  been  borrowed  from  that  book.  Such  works  are 
now  issued  at  one-fourth  the  price  that  was  common  before 
the  chemist,  the  electrician,  and  the  printer  enabled  the 
photographer  to  offer  tint  as  well  as  form  in  the  offspring 
of  his  art. 

If  limning  by  indirection  were  ever  to  be  accomplished, 
the  eye  of  artifice  had  to  see  a  thing  as  it  is,  without  warp 

1  Published  by  the  Doubledaj  &  McClnre  Company,  New  York,  1899. 


THE   CIRCLE   ROUNDED  289 

or  wryness.  This  duly  attained,  it  was  next  needful  to 
bring  the  photographic  plate  to  the  same  responsiveness, 
colour  for  colour,  as  that  of  the  retina  whose  office  it  would 
rival.  This,  too,  was  done,  with  the  singular  outcome  that 
not  only  does  the  pencil  of  the  sketcher  and  the  draughts- 
man know  a  competitor,  but  so  also  does  the  brush  of  the 
painter,  notwithstanding  the  variegation  of  his  palette. 


CHAPTER    XXI 

SWIFTNESS     AND     ADAPTABILITY— THE     DRV     PLATE— A 
NEW   WORLD  CONQUERED 

"TAIIE  first  photographs  not  only  left  much  to  be  desired 
in  recalling  form  and  colour,  but  made  undue  de- 
mands upon  time.  For  the  impressions  shown  by  Niepce 
to  the  Royal  Society  in  1827,  exposures 

Time  Reductions,  of  six  hours  were  necessary.  This  was 
much  longer  than  an  artist  with  his  pen- 
cil or  brush  would  have  required.  Daguerre,  twelve  years 
later,  reduced  the  time  demanded  to  thirty  minutes;  yet 
this  improvement  did  not  permit  him  to  pass  from  land- 
scapes to  portraits,  and  at  first  he  did  not  deem  his  process 
suited  to  portraiture  at  all.  It  was  Dr.  John  William 
Draper  who  first  took  a  portrait  with  a  camera — that  of  his 
sister,  Miss  Dorothy  Catherine  Draper — accomplishing  the 
feat  early  in  1840,  at  the  University  of  the  City  of  New 
York,  in  Washington  Square  (Plate  X).  The  lady  is  still 
living  to  show  us  that  one  long  life  may  bridge  the  inter- 
val between  the  germination  and  the  flowering  of  a  great 
art. 

Fox-Talbot,  taking  another  tack  from  that  of  Niepce 
and  Daguerre,  sought  to  obtain  pictures  on  paper  instead 
of  on  metal;  and  paper,  because  translucent,  lent  itself  to 
reproduction  as  "negatives."  He  made  the  capital  dis- 
ry  that  gallic  acid  produces  upon  the  salts  of  silver, 
when  slightly  heated,  precisely  the  same  blackening  effect 

290 


Plate  X. 

COPY   OF   THE    EARLIEST    SUNLIGHT 

PICTURE   OF  A   HUMAN    FACE. 

Miss  Dorothy  Catherine  Draper,  taken  by  her  brother,  Professor 

John  William  Draper,  early  in  1840. 


TEN    SECONDS   ENOUGH  291 

as  does  light.  Using  this  acid  as  a  developer,  he  was  able 
to  shorten  the  exposure  needed  for  his  "  calotype "  to 
three  minutes.  To  this  day  the  derivatives  of  gallic  acid 
maintain  their  value  in  the  developing-room,  against  the 
rivalry  of  many  new  compounds. 

The  next  step  forward  was  taken  by  St.  Victor,  a 
nephew  of  Niepce,  who  employed  glass  as  a  support  in- 
stead of  paper  or  metal,  coating  it  with  a  thin  layer  of 
sensitised  albumen.  He  thus  effected  not  only  a  shorten- 
ing of  time,  but  a  gain  in  convenience  and  adaptability 
which  revolutionised  the  art  of  photography.  The  trans- 
parency of  glass  gives  one  a  negative  incomparably  supe- 
rior to  that  of  any  merely  translucent  material.  Keeping 
to  the  path  broken  by  Daguerre,  John  Frederick  Goddard, 
in  1840,  exposed  an  iodised  silver  plate  to  the  vapour  oi 
bromine.  He  was  able  forthwith  to  take  an  impression 
upon  it  in  twenty  seconds — the  greatest  feat  in  time  re- 
duction attained  by  any  early  inventor  in  photography. 
To  Ue  Gray  and  Scott  Archer  are  due  the  supplanting  of 
albumen  by  collodion  films,  which  gave  results  of  new  deli- 
cacy and  beauty.  By  1854  the  collodion  process  had 
driven  every  other  from  the  field  and  brought  down  the 
time  limit  to  ten  seconds.  The  preparation  of  these  films 
required  two  distinct  operations — first,  the  flowing  of  a 
glass  plate  with  collodion  usually  containing  ammonium 
iodide,  cadmium  iodide,  and  cadmium  bromide;  second, 
the  bathing  this  plate,  when  it  had  set,  in  a  solution  of  sil- 
ver nitrate,  that  it  might  be  sensitised.  In  1864  Bolton 
and  Sayce  abolished  the  troublesome  silver-nitrate  bath 
by  combining  the  sensitive  silver  salts  with  the  collodion 
in  its  original  manufacture.  The  rapidity  of  these  plates 
was  not,  however,  remarkable. 

With  every  successive  shortening  of  exposure  the  range 
of  the  camera  grew  broader,  portraiture  became  an  amuse- 
ment for  amateurs,  and  the  professional  operator  no  longer 


292  SWIFTNESS   AND   SCOPE 

dreaded  such  an  annoyance  as  the  blur  due  to  a  bud's  un- 
folding while   painting   itself   upon   a  slow  plate.      Armed 

with  his  collodion  films,  the  photogra- 
The  Gelatin  Dry  Plate.  pner   paused   as   if  he   had   reached   the 

summit  of  his  art.  He  was  really  but 
crossing  a  temporary  bridge.  Among  the  photographers 
who  refused  to  rest  and  be  thankful  was  Dr.  R.  L.  Mad- 
dux of  Southampton,  in  England,  whose  objections  to 
collodion  plates  were  manifold.  Their  preparation,  he 
said,  was  costly,  slow,  and  hazardous;  because  they  had 
to  be  used  wet,  they  demanded  the  services  of  a  skilled 
operator,  while  they  were  restricted  to  such  brief  impres- 
sions as  might  be  received  before  the  plate  dried.  With  a 
view  to  finding  something  less  troublesome  than  collodion, 
Dr.  Maddox  began  a  series  of  experiments  with  isinglass. 
Dissatisfied  with  its  results,  he  turned  to  gelatin,  uniting 
with  it  silver  iodide  such  as  he  had  been  accustomed  to 
combine  with  collodion.  Just  then  he  had  been  photo- 
graphing some  laurels,  and  had  made  a  rather  poor  picture. 
What  could  improve  his  imperfect  plate?  He  remembered 
having  heard  that  for  foliage  the  bromides  of  silver  are 
better  suited  than  the  iodides.  To  the  bromides  he  forth- 
with resorted,  increasing  the  quantity  by  degrees,  and 
lessening  that  of  the  iodides.  So  marked  at  that  point 
was  his  success  that  he  decided  to  use  the  bromides  alone, 
achieving  results  still  more  satisfactory 

When,  in  187  I,  the  first  effective  dry  gelatin  plate  thus 
saw  the  light  of  day  and  took  its  impress,  Dr.  Maddox  at 
once  published  his  experiments.  To  some  of  the  leaders 
in  photography,  professional  and  amateur,  their  promise 
was  as  clear  as  that  of  dawn.  Mr.  Charles  Bennett  of 
London,  by  wanning  the  gelatin  emulsion  for  days  to- 
gether brought  it  to  a  sensitiveness  and  permanence  which 
made  it  straightway  a  commercial  as  well  as  an  artistic 
success.        In    [879   Mansfield   brought  the  emulsion  to  the 


TIME  NOW  SERVANT,  NOT  MASTER    293 

temperature  of  boiling  water,  and  found  that  in  less  than 
an  hour  it  had  acquired  the  maximum  of  sensitive  quality. 
A  collodion  wet  plate  demands  an  exposure  of  from  ten  to 
fifteen  seconds ;  a  dry  plate  does  its  work  in  a  tenth,  a 
thousandth,  or  even  a  smaller  fraction  of  a  second.  And 
yet  collodion,  from  its  finer  texture,  is  capable  of  effects 
so  delicate  as  to  make  the  critic  hope  that  its  best  quali- 
ties may  yet  be  imported  into  a  dry  plate  as  rapid  as  that 
to-day  composed  of  gelatin.  In  a  narrow  range  of  im- 
portant work,  chiefly  in  the  manufacture  of  printers'  plates, 
collodion  emulsions  are  still  indispensable ;  in  nearly  every 
other  department  of  photography  their  rival  holds  the 
field.  As  we  note  the  successive  uses  of  the  dry  plate,  and 
observe  how  vastly  it  enlarges  the  scope  of  the  camera,  we 
shall  see  how  eminent  a  place  Dr.  Maddox  occupies  among 
the  great  inventors  who  have  made  photography  what  it  is. 
Beginning  with  a  time  limit  of  one  second,  the  dry  gela- 
tin plate  has  been  so  increased  in  sensitiveness  that  M.  L. 
Decombe,  of  the  Paris  Academy  of  Sci- 
ences, has  employed  it  to  photograph  control  of  the  Time 
Hertz  waves  in  less  than  the    five-mil-  Limit, 

lionth  part  of  a  second.  A  triumph  such 
as  this  is  to  be  credited  to  new  accelerations  in  "  develop- 
ing " — an  art  which  reaches  the  tap-root  beneath  both 
physics  and  chemistry.  To-day  the  photographer  in  the 
wide  diversity  of  his  plates,  quick  and  slow,  has  complete 
control  of  the  element  of  time,  and  his  camera  conse- 
quently enjoys  unlimited  adaptability.  Let  us  note,  too, 
the  advantages  of  the  dry  plate  as  compared  with  its  pre- 
decessor. It  is  always  ready  for  use ;  it  requires  no 
troublesome  liquid  accessories;  it  can  be  placed  in  any  po- 
sition ;  it  may  have  a  backing,  not  of  brittle  glass,  but  of 
flexible  celluloid  ;  it  even  dispenses  with  an  operator — an 
impression  may  be  had  by  the  touch  of  a  spring  setting 
free  an  automatic  mechanism.     After  an  exposure  lasting 


2c;4  SWIFTNESS    AND    SCOPE 

but  an  instant,  or  protracted  for  hours,  the  plate  may  be 
developed  at  pleasure  many  months  later.  Endowed  with 
this  wealth  of  quality,  the  dry  gelatin  plate  takes  rank 
with  the  electromagnet,  or  with  the  optical  lens  to  which 
it  is  itself  joined,  as  one  of  the  creative  inventions  which  not 
only  add  to  the  capital  of  science  and  art,  but  also  increase 
the  rate  at  which  its  gains  are  heaped  higher  and  higher. 
On  the  threshold  of  photography  it  was  debated  whether 
a  pencil  of  light  could  work  as  rapidly  as  the  pencil  of  art. 
By  successive  advances  the  camera  has  all  but  overcome 
the  tyranny  of  time,  and  stretches  its  sway  into  dominions 
where  the  pencil  and  brush,  however  skilfully  held,  would 
have  remained  unexercised  forever. 

Let  us  take  a  rapid  glance  at  the  camera,  provided  with 
dry  plates,  in  the  hands  of  the  man  of  science  afield. 
Were  he  restricted  to  pencil  or  brush, 
The  Dry  Plate  Afield,  or  even  to  the  wet  plates  of  the  collo- 
dion process,  he  would  suffer  not  only 
great  loss  of  time,  he  would  miss  taking  ninety-nine  pic- 
tures out  of  every  hundred  that  now  fill  his  portfolio.  In 
the  whole  sphere  of  ingenuity  there  is  no  happier  case  of 
initiation  than  the  touch  on  a  kodak  that  affords  an  impres- 
sion which,  perhaps  a  year  later,  is  completed  as  a  picture. 
It  is  therefore  as  plain  as  its  own  daylight  that,  in  its 
most  ordinary  applications,  photography  vastly  multiplies 
the  winnings  of  a  trained  observer;  it  does  all  that  an  ac- 
complished sketcher  can  do,  and  does  it  with  unimpeachable 
accuracy,  with  a  swiftness  all  but  instantaneous.  Mark  its 
services  to  a  botanist  as  he  journeys  in  Colorado,  or  in  the 
Canadian  Northwest.  While  gathering  specimens  for  his 
collection,  he  secures  the  portrait  of  a  flower  here,  a  shrub 
there,  in  the  full  flush  of  life,  very  different  from  the  mum* 
milled  remains  entombed  in  the  herbarium.  Once  more  at 
home,  his  slides,  coloured  to  nature,  transport  metropolitan 
assemblies  to  new  worlds  of  floral  beauty. 


AIDS   TO    PLANT    STUDY  295 

In  labours  less  fascinating,  but  of  higher  claim,  the  stu- 
dent employs  photography  to  compare  the  tissues  of  allied 
plants  as  diversified  at  the  sea-level  and  on  the  mountain- 
top  ;  as  modified  by  the  frosts  of  Alaska,  or  by  the  arid 
winds  of  Nevada;  or,  in  an  inspection  still  more  intimate, 
to  detect  the  formation  of  starch  in  a  leaf  as  furthered  by 
generous  warmth  and  light.  Botany  has  an  economic  side 
which  is  constantly  kept  in  view.  From  the  Departments 
of  Agriculture  at  Washington  and  Ottawa,  from  experi- 
mental farms  scattered  throughout  North  America,  many 
thousand  seeds,  cuttings,  and  saplings  are  distributed  every 
year.  It  may  be  an  apple  from  Russia,  or  wheat  from 
Finland,  that  is  portrayed  as  it  grows — with  unmistakable 
evidence  of  its  thrift  or  failure.  When  the  pictures  are 
compared,  much  is  learned  as  to  the  varieties  best  suited 
for  severe  climates,  for  sandy  soils,  for  the  quick  produc- 
tion of  timber,  or  a  stout  resistance  to  vermin.  No  pen- 
cil sketches  could  have  the  same  perfect  trustworthiness. 
In  combating  pests  of  all  kinds,  whether  fungi,  beetles,  or 
flies,  new  methods  are  constantly  devised,  and  nothing 
makes  them  so  easily  understood  as  a  photograph.  For- 
estry is  to-day  receiving  a  noteworthy  impulse  at  the  hands 
of  Mr.  Gifford  Pinchot,  forester  of  the  United  States  De- 
partment of  Agriculture  at  Washington.  His  bulletins 
derive  attractiveness  as  well  as  value  from  illustrations  due 
to  the  camera.  He  has  in  hand  a  photographic  description 
of  the  forests  of  the  United  States,  which  is  steadily  ap- 
proaching completion. 

To  the  student  of  rocks  the  camera  is  every  whit  as 
useful  as  to  the  student  of  plants.  It  gives  him  prints, 
omitting  no  detail  of  dip  or  strike.  It  affords  memoranda 
of  cuttings  and  shafts  which  the  engineer  may  be  obliged 
to  cover  on  the  very  day  of  their  exposure.  In  the  new 
education,  geology  and  geography  are  studied  together ; 
the  features  of   the   earth,  recognised   as  more  than  skin- 


296  SWIFTNESS   AND   SCOPE 

deep,  are  referred  to  the  world  forces  age-long  in  activity 
whose  surface  manifestations  they  are.  Accordingly,  the 
geographer,  as  well  as  the  geologist,  seeks  to  be  an  adept 
with  the  camera.  Particularly  significant  are  photo- 
graphs of  the  effects  wrought  by  torrential  rain,  by  glacial 
action,  by  the  rapid  erosion  due  to  sand-storms;  all  of 
them  showing  at  work  to-day  the  enginery  which  in  the 
illimitable  past  has  sculptured  the  earth  from  primeval 
chaos.  To  do  this  adequately  it  is  necessary  to  take  pan- 
oramic views,  part  by  part.  A  camera  is  carefully  Levelled, 
its  first  plate  is  impressed,  the  camera  is  then  revolved  so 
that  a  second  impression  overlaps  the  first  a  little,  and  so 
on  until  the  whole  horizon  is  traversed. 

The  land-surveyor,  whose  relations  with  the  geographer 
are  often  those  of  a  partner,  especially  in  the  exploration 
of  a  new  country,  has  for  years  used  a  camera  with  lenses 
at  once  telescopic  and  photographic.  These  lenses  are  of 
a  form  which  will  cover  an  angular  field  of  6o°  without 
measurable  distortion,  and  give  uniform  definition  all  over 
the  plate.  The  pioneer  in  this  branch  of  art  was  M.  Beau- 
temps  Beaupre,  who  began  his  labours  more  than  fifty 
years  ago.  In  the  comparatively  recent  development  of 
photographic  surveying  the  leaders  are  Colonel  Laussedat, 
the  director  of  the  Conservatory  of  Arts  and  Trades  in 
Paris,  and  Mr.  Bridges  of  London.  Thanks  to  their  skill, 
phototheodolites  are  now  built  with  power  to  sweep  a 
radius  of  four  miles  and  more.  In  the  preliminary  surveys 
for  a  canal,  or  railway,  the  camera  is  much  preferable  to 
ordinary  surveying  instruments.  It  is  often  very  difficult 
to  determine  beforehand  how  much  mapping  will  be  ne- 
iry  to  give  the  engineer  all  the  data  for  a  choice  among 
the  various  routes  in  his  purview.  The  district  may  have 
to  be  revisited  again  and  again  to  supply  the  requisite 
details,  and  most  of  them  may  prove  useless  in  the 
end.     But  if  the  field  has  been  intelligently  photographed 


[""IT-'          "^H 

*■» ■->  -••v.*23 

THE  JUNGFRAU    FROM   THE    HOHEWEG,  INTERLAKEN, 
SWITZERLAND    (SIXTEEN    MILES   DISTANT). 


Plate  XI. 
From  Scribners'  Magazine,  October,  iSqq.     Copyright,  iSgq,  by  Charles  Scribners  Sons. 

THE   JUNGFRAU    FROM    THE    SAME    STANDPOINT   (SIXTEEN    MILES 
DISTANT),    TELEPHOTG    LENS. 


THE   SURVEYOR    SECONDED  297 

there  is  no  necessity  to  return  in  quest  of  incidental 
features. 

A  noteworthy  feat  in  the  photographic  survey  of  new 
country  was  accomplished  in  1893-94  by  M.  E.  Deville. 
He  succeeded  in  covering  no  less  than  14,000  square  miles 
of  the  Rocky  Mountain  territory  of  Canada,  carrying  his 
camera  to  the  boundary  of  Alaska,  over  passes  of  uncom- 
mon difficulty.  As  the  result  of  careful  comparison  he 
estimates  that  photography  is  but  one-third  as  expensive 
as  the  old  method  of  the  plane-table,  while  much  more 
expeditious.  A  remarkable  map  of  the  Canadian  National 
Park,  created  by  the  telescopic  camera,  was  exhibited  at 
the  Columbian  Exposition  in  1893.  It  was  made  up  of 
twelve  sheets,  each  comprising  a  view  of  about  sixty-three 
square  miles  in  area. 

Where  mountain-peaks  do  not  afford  him  an  elevated 
outlook,  a  surveyor  may  leave  the  earth  and  betake  him- 
self to  a  balloon.  In  a  photograph  secured  700  feet  above 
Stamford  Hill,  in  London,  the  topographical  features 
were  defined  much  more  sharply  than  would  have  been 
possible  without  the  camera. 

Telephotography,  in  fields  other  than  that  of  land-sur- 
veying, is  now  prosecuted  with  remarkable  results.  With 
lenses  developed  from  those  of  an  opera-glass,  M.  F. 
Boissonas  of  Geneva  has  taken  a  photograph  of  Mont  Blanc, 
full  of  detail,  at  a  distance  of  forty-four  miles.  This 
and  many  other  striking  pictures  are  reproduced  by  Mr. 
Thomas  R.  Dallmeyer  in  a  work  which  describes  one  of 
the  most  attractive  departments  of  photography.1  Mr. 
Dallmeyer  shows  us  how  much  a  telephotographic  camera 
improves  ordinary  portraiture  by  its  precision  of  perspec- 
tive. In  many  diverse  walks  of  science  this  camera  has  an 
array  of  tempting  gifts :    it   offers   the   geologist  a  minute 

1  Telephotography,  by  Thomas  R.  Dallmeyer.  London,  W.  Heineman ; 
New  York,  Longmans,  Green  &  Co.,  1899. 


298  SWIFTNESS    AND   SCOPE 

delineation  of  the  stratification  of  cliffs  far  beyond  the 
range  of  common  lenses.  The  architect  and  the  student 
of  archaeology  can  readily  secure  pictures  of  carving  and 
sculpture  otherwise  quite  inaccessible,  while  large  buildings 
may  be  photographed  from  such  a  distance  that  they  will 
appear  virtually  as  plans  in  elevation  ;  the  naturalist,  without 
alarming  a  rabbit  in  its  form,  or  a  grebe  on  its  nest,  may 
obtain  a  portrait  of  either  in  a  most  characteristic  attitude. 
Mr.  Dwight  L.  Elmendorf  of  New  York  has  pursued  this 
branch  of  art  with  uncommon  success.  Plate  XI  is  re- 
produced from  illustrations  which  accompanied  his  article 
on  "  Telephotography  "  in  Scribners*  Magazine,  October, 
1899. 

Since  the  historic  feats  of  Mr.  James  Glaisher,  in  1862, 
— which  nearly  cost  him  his  life, — balloons  have  added 
much  to  the  data  of  meteorology.  An  elevation  of  a 
single  mile  often  reveals  strong  aerial  currents  unfelt  at 
the  surface  of  the  earth,  and  which  give  warning  of  an  ap- 
proaching storm.  But  a  balloon  is  costly  and  hard  to 
manage  ;  for  many  purposes,  even  to  a  height  of  two  miles, 
a  well-built  kite  is  equally  serviceable,  especially  when 
fitted  with  appliances  both  electric  and  photographic.  In 
the  application  of  kites  to  answering  the  questions  of  the 
meteorologist,  the  place  of  honour  is  held  by  Mr.  A.  Law- 
rence Rotch,  of  the  Blue  Hill  Meteorological  Observatory, 
near  Boston,  Massachusetts.1 

1  Mr.  Rotch  writes  (under  date  <>f  December  9,  1S99):  "I  have  just  re- 
ceived  my  automatic  kite-camera  from  the  maker,  M.  L.  Gaumont  of  Paris, 
[ts  design  is  based  upon  tliat  of  the  much  larger  camera  constructed  for  M. 
Cailletel  in  order  to  photograph  from  a  balloon  the  ground  vertically  beneath, 
s.i  that  by  reference  to  a  scale-map  the  heighl  as  well  as  the  <lrift  <>f  the  balloon 
might  be  determined.     The  present  apparatus  is  intended  to  photograph  the 

upper  sin  fa<  es  of  clouds,  ami  may  also  serve  to  make  a  map  >>f  the  country  over 
which  it  passe.  As  it  is  intended  to  be  lifted  by  kites  its  weight  is  but  six  pounds. 
It  is  contained  in  a  box  about  six  in<  lies  ,  nbe,  and  will  be  suspended  vertically 
below  the  balloon.  There  are  three  <  lock  movements  :  the  first  operates  the  shut- 
ter nt  the  objective ;  the  second  controls  the  operation  of  view-taking  (which  is 


Photographed  by  W.  E.  Carlin  of  New  York. 

Pika,  or  Little   Chief  Hare. 


Plate    XII.  Copyright  by  George  Shims,  3rd,  i8q8. 

Deer   Photographed  at  Night. 
TYPICAL    PHOTOGRAPHS   OF    LIVE   AXIMALS. 


HUNTSMEN    OF   A   NEW   TYPE       299 

The  simplicity  and  celerity  of  the  camera  give  it  ines- 
timable value  to  the  naturalist  or  the  physiologist.  It  en- 
ables him  to  follow  day  by  day,  even 
hour  by  hour,  the  development  of  a  Gifts  to  the  study  of 
bacillus,  a  mollusc,  or  a  chick.  He 
might,  if  quick  and  skilful  with  the 
pencil,  draw  a  portrait  or  two  for  his  note-book,  but  how 
could  he  find  time  and  opportunity  to  sketch  a  hundred? 
In  exploration  it  provides  him  with  an  instant  means  of 
depicting  an  insect,  a  reptile,  or  a  bird  in  its  home  sur- 
roundings— perchance  in  the  very  act  of  seizing  its  prey. 
Mr.  Cherry  Kearton,  the  English  naturalist-photographer, 
has  shown  us  what  prowess  joined  to  skill  can  do  in  catch- 
ing glimpses  of  sea-birds  perched  on  crags  which,  to  wing- 
less man,  are  perilous  in  the  extreme.  Mr.  William  E. 
Carlin  of  New  York,  with  equal  enthusiasm,  has  secured 
portraits  of  the  very  shyest  quadrupeds  of  the  Rockies; 
his  picture  of  the  pika,  or  little  chief  hare,  is  of  unexam- 
pled rarity  (Plate  XII).  Taking  another  path,  Mr.  George 
Shiras  III  of  Pittsburg  has  sought  out  wild  deer  which, 
for  the  most  part,  feed  and  drink  at  night.  His  photo- 
graphs, taken  by  flash-light,  are  among  the  best  ever  added 
to  the  portrait-gallery  of  natural  history  (Plate  XII). 

Physicians  find  the  camera  an  important  means  of  regis- 
tering the   course   of  a  malady  and  of  studying  its  treat- 
ment,     the      pictures      easily      lending 
themselves,   furthermore,   to   class-room    From   *he    Field   of 

XT  ,  Health  to  the  Bed- 

mstruction.      J\o  student  of  bacteriology       side  of  Disease, 
to-day  considers  himself  fully  equipped 
for   study  until  he  has  reached  the  mastery    of  a  camera; 
for  his  "  cultures,"  microscopic  as  they  are  in  size,   would 

regulated  before  the  camera  leaves  the  ground,  the  period  being  intended  to 
vary  from  ten  minutes  to  two  hours) ;  the  third  is  charged  with  turning  the 
roll  of  three-inch  film.  The  time  between  successive  exposures  may  be  any 
period  from  three  to  nine  minutes." 


300  SWIFTNESS    AND    SCOPE 

demand  the  rarest  aptitude  to  be  accurately  sketched. 
At  times  the  instrument  may  be  discarded  while  its 
chemicals  are  retained  for  direct  use.  The  physiologist,  in- 
jecting silver  salts  into  nervous  tissue,  is  rewarded  by  a 
series  of  blackened  branchings,  each  telling  a  hitherto  un- 
told story  of  structure  and  function. 

The  camera  sees  much  where  the  eye  sees  nothing,  be- 
cause the  photographic  film  is  impressible  by  many  kinds 
of  light  that  are  without  effect  on  the  retina.  In  Ohio, 
a  few  years  ago,  a  lawsuit  was  decided  when  the  fifth 
nature  to  a  will,  otherwise  undecipherable,  came  out 
clearly  in  a  photograph.  A  skilful  use  of  the  same  subtile 
vision  brings  to  light  the  first  inscription  committed  to 
ancient  parchments — the  writing  all  but  completely  erased 
for  a  second  use  of  the  vellum.  The  gaze  of  a  camera  has 
beeh  turned  upon  an  adult  puma,  and  at  once  the 
which,  to  unaided  sight,  disappeared  in  its  youth,  came  forth 
plainly  on  the  sensitive  plate.  A  case  of  smallpox  may 
in  like  manner  be  detected  by  its  blotches  showing  them- 
selves in  a  photograph  long  before  they  are  discernible  to 
the  eye. 

It  is  a  curious  fact  that  the  improvements  which  make 
the  camera  at  once  small  and  speed}-  in  action  place  a  new- 
facility  in  the  hands  of  the  anthropolo- 
Aboriginai  Portraiture,  gist — that  student  of  man,  not  as  an 
assemblage  of  tissues,  but  as  a  bundle 
of  primitive  traits,  habits,  and  customs.  The  informed 
traveller  among  the  remaining  aborigines  of  the  world  is 
anxious  about  their  impending  disappearance,  not  merely 
by  the  sword  or  through  disease,  but  by  a  semi-civilisa- 
tion not  less  fatal  to  their  best  traditions  in  art  and  in- 
dustry. From  superstitious  or  other  fear,  the  native  in 
many  parts  of  America,  Africa,  and  Australia  has  an  un- 
conquerable aversion  to  having  his  portrait  taken.  Says 
Mr.   E.   F.    im   Thurn :   "Instantaneous  and  secretly   taken 


ABORIGINES    PORTRAYED  301 

photographs  are  best,  as  savages  are  usually  afraid  to  be 
photographed.  A  Carib  of  Guiana,  when  in  Georgetown, 
looks  cowed  and  miserable ;  in  the  country,  at  home,  he  is 
a  manly  and  attractive  chap."  Photography  is  doing  no 
worthier  work  in  the  world  than  when  it  thus  catches  every 
surviving  relic  of  savage  and  barbaric  life.  That  the  Xew- 
Zealanders  are  alive  to  this  question  of  depicting  aborigi- 
nal art  is  evident  in  a  note  from  Mr.  A.  Hamilton  of  the 
University  of  Otago,  Dunedin  (dated  August  3,  1899): 
"  I  am  photographing  all  the  carvings  and  similar  relics 
that  remain  in  New  Zealand,  and  obtaining  representations 
by  photography  of  social  arts,  such  as  planting  food-crops, 
weaving,  fire-making  by  friction,  and  so  on.  Some  of 
these  will  be  published  in  my  book  on  Maori  Art,  now 
in  its  fourth  part,  issued  at  the  expense  of  the  New  Zea- 
land Institute,  Wellington.  I  am  also  forming  for  the  in- 
stitute a  record  collection  of  all  the  photographs  that  I  can 
get  from  European  and  other  museums  of  the  Maori  arti- 
cles in  their  collections." 

Whether  a  savage  resembles  our  ancestors  or  differs 
from  them,  equally  instructive  is  a  full  portrayal  of  the  man 
himself,  of  his  response  to  the  needs  of  sustenance,  shelter, 
and  war,  his  attempts,  often  admirable,  at  decoration  and 
the  symbolism  of  religion.  We  are  wont  to  mourn  the 
species  of  birds  and  beasts  that  have  disappeared  forever 
before  the  sportsman  and  the  plume-seeker.  But  how  much 
poorer  is  the  world  for  the  loss  of  such  a  tribe  of  men  as 
that  which,  about  a  century  ago,  became  extinct  on  the 
Easter  Islands,  leaving  behind  writing  of  great  beauty  as  a 
token  of  their  high  rank  in  art  and  intelligence!  Even 
from  an  economic  point  of  view,  native  industries,  such  as 
those  of  the  American  Indians,  richly  repay  study.  The 
shawls  and  blankets,  the  baskets  and  pottery,  in  the  Na- 
tional Museum  at  Washington  are  not  simply  a  feast  for 
the    eye:    they   have  golden  hints   for    the    manufacturer. 


302  SWIFTNESS    AND   SCOPE 

These  aboriginal  masterpieces  deserve  to  be  accurately  re- 
produced in  colours,  not  only  to  give  de.  the  world 
around,  but  to  enrich  the  repertory  of  every  thoughtful 
:ier. 
The  traveller  and  the  explorer,  whether  they  be  men  of 
science  or  not,  owe  much  to  the  gelatin  plate,  which  defies 
climatic  si  however  severe.  A  few  years  ago  it  was 
a  matter  of  great  difficulty  to  secure  en  route  good  nega- 
tives on  collodion  films.  Often  when  the  photographer 
reached  home  he  found,  to  his  chagrin,  that  his  plates  were 
1  o-day  Mr.  Peary  easily  obtains  excellent  pic- 
tures in  the  arctic  regions,  while  scenes  in  tropical  Africa 
and  South  America  are  photographed  with  equal  perfection, 
their  extremes  of  climate  exerting  no  effect  upon  the  plates 
employed. 

The  ease  and  quickness  of  the  camera  open  to  it  a  wide 
field   in  picturing  the  progress   of  work  too  rapid   or  too 

complicated  for  the  pencil.  A  I 
pictures  in  Series,  and  SvouP  of  constructors— engineers,  archi- 
New  Revelations.  tects,  ship-builders — derive  help  from 
the  photographs  readily  taken  day  by 
day,  which  explain  in  the  clearest  manner  the  erection  of 
a  bridge,  a  steel  office  building,  or  an  armoured  cruiser. 
With  the  same  invaluable  aid  a  landscape-gardener,  a 

.  or  an  expert  in  irrigation,  may  follow  in  his  city  office 

the  prosecution  of  his  various  plans  nearly  as  well  as  if  he 

were  supervising  a  single  task,  and  on  the  ground  in  per- 

In  a  foundry  or  a  machine-shop  the  pictures  taken 

during  an  important  casting,  or  an  elaborate  piece  of  engine 

ruction,  enable  it  to  be  duplicated  at  any  future  time, 

there  or  elsewhere,  with  much  aid  to  beginners,  with  much 

ing  of  memories  on  the  part  of  their  seniors. 

The    engineer,    discarding    the    pencil    for   the    camera, 

nful  loan,  with  the  result 
that  he  learns  much  in  the  field  of  design  and  experiment. 


LIGHT   AS   A    DETECTIVE  303 

Borrowing  his  polariser,  a  simple  instrument  which  brings 
light  to  a  single  plane  of  vibration,  he  uses  it  as  a  searcher. 
A  change  in  the  inner  structure  of  glass,  though  due  to 
but  moderate  pressure,  may  be  detected  in  altering  the  re- 
frangibility  of  a  beam  of  .polarised  light.  The  inventor 
who  thinks  that  he  has  devised  a  truss,  or  a  girder,  of 
new  efficiency  has,  therefore,  only  to  construct  a  model  in 
glass  to  bring  his  plan  to  an  inexpensive  test.  A  beam  of 
polarised  light  sent  through  the  glass  will  plainly  show  to 
the  eye,  and  register  in  the  camera,  the  distribution  and 
extent  of  the  strains  imposed  by  a  moving  load.  In  like 
manner  a  piece  of  glass  which  has  been  imperfectly 
annealed  at  once  declares  its  weakness,  so  that  it  may  be 
excluded  from  chemical  uses  or  mechanical  pressures  likely 
to  be  too  severe  for  it.  The  lenses  of  large  telescopes,  as 
moved  through  wide  variations  of  angle  with  the  horizon, 
are  subjected  to  severe  strains.  It  is  imperative,  therefore, 
that  they  should  be  manufactured  of  thoroughly  annealed 
glass.  In  the  case  of  the  thirty-six-inch  telescope  at  Lick 
Observatory,  nineteen  discs  of  glass  as  tested  by  polarised 
light  were  rejected  before  a  disc  of  satisfactory  quality  was 
found.  The  same  subtile  detective  is  yielding  knowledge 
of  the  architecture  of  crystals,  and,  passing  from  the  lab- 
oratory-table to  the  counter,  it  is  busy  separating  false 
gems  from  real,  and  adulterants  from  food,  drugs,  and  the 
raw  materials  of  the  spinner  and  the  chemist. 

Aid  to  the  navigator  more  ingenious  still  is  proffered  by 
Dr.  C.  Runge,  who  has  much  simplified  the  ascertainment 
of  longitude,  commonly  a  difficult  task. 

He   first  photographs   the   mOOn,    then,    at    Longitude  Ascertained. 

intervals,  bright   stars   or  planets  which 
come  to  the  place  where  the  moon  appeared  a  few  minutes 
before.      From  these  pictures,  accurately  timed,  the  longi- 
tude can  be  computed  with  readiness  from  the  data  of  the 
nautical  almanac. 


304  SWIFTNESS   AND   SCOPE 

While  the  camera  in  its  highest  work  may  call  forth  all  the 
mind  and  skill  of  a  man  of  the  eminence  of  Captain  Abney, 
or  Mr.  Matthew  Carey  Lea,  let  the  ordi- 
Amateur  illustrations,  nary  user  of  it  be  glad  that  in  its  every- 
day applications  it  easily  falls  within  the 
range  of  his  judgment  and  adroitness.  Thanks  to  the 
inventors  who  have  simplified  its  form,  reduced  its  size, 
improved  its  films,  condensed  its  chemicals  to  tablets 
soluble  at  pleasure,  and  produced  papers  which  may  be  de- 
veloped in  ordinary  light,  the  camera  now  supplements  the 
pen  in  a  delightful  way.  A  young  fellow  leaves  his  home  in 
New  York  to  become  a  miner  in  Arizona.  He  writes  to  his 
friends,  describing  his  new  surroundings,  and  this  he  does 
graphically  and  well.  But  he  manages  "to  take  them  to  the 
place,"  as  the  Scotch  say,  by  a  few  snap-shots  which  show 
his  cabin,  the  shaft  in  which  he  toils,  the  neighbouring 
cave  with  its  array  of  stalactites  and  stalagmites;  while  the 
force  of  the  occasional  rain-floods  from  the  mountains 
overhanging  the  mine  is  depicted  in  the  utter  wreckage 
of  a  village  street.  Or  it  may  be  that  this  young  fellow  is 
sufficiently  advanced  in  his  fortunes  to  take  a  trip  to 
Mexico.  His  note-book,  as  well  as  his  letters,  are  en- 
riched in  the  most  telling  way  by  a  camera  no  bigger  than 
a  cartridge-box.  The  sensitive  plate,  repeating  what  it 
sees,  completes  the  description  in  words,  and  henceforth 
the  young  miner's  friends  in  the  distant  East  can  imagine 
him  just  as  he  is  —  in  a  world  to  them  almost  as  strange  as 
if  it  were  another  planet.  It  is  this  new  power  to  make 
others  far  away  both  in  time  and  place  see  all  that  meets 
one's  eye  here  and  now,  and  this  with  the  very  minimum 
of  skill  or  outlay,  that  gives  photograph)-  a  universality 
denied  to  the  work  of  the  pencil  or  the  brush.  To  wield 
these  acceptably,  no  matter  what  enthusiasts  may  say,  re- 
quires both  natural  aptitude  and  judicious  training.  In  the 
transference  of  impressions  the  kodak  does  thoroughly  and 


THE   AMATEUR'S   AMPLE   FIELD     305 

at  once  much  that  before  photography  demanded  uncom- 
mon talent,  and  opportunities  for  the  education  of  that  tal- 
ent which  were  rarer  still. 

When  an  amateur  takes  up  a  congenial  field  of  photog- 
raphy, and  patiently  cultivates  the  portraiture  of  flowers,  or 
birds,  or  aught  else,  he  soon  finds  himself  a  well-informed 
student  without  intending  it,  an  authority,  perchance,  and 
that  in  a  domain  which  is  certain  to  grow  in  its  interest  as 
he  tills  it  longer  and  better.  And  he  may  do  less  than 
this  and  still  be  rewarded.  Poor  indeed  is  the  holiday 
jaunt  that  cannot  leave  him  reminders  in  picturesque  bits 
of  road,  of  woodland,  or  of  brookside.  From  the  brain  a 
scene  begins  to  fade  the  moment  the  eye  ceases  to  rest 
upon  it,  but  the  camera  has  a  memory  that  never  forgets. 

If  photography  brings  much  of  refined  pleasure  to  the 
amateur,  it  owes  not  a  little,  in  turn,  to  the  men  who  have 
used  the  camera  simply  because  they  thoroughly  liked  its 
work.  Some  of  the  most  valuable  compounds  used  in 
photography,  some  of  its  best  forms  of  apparatus,  are  due 
to  the  non-professional  and  non-professorial  tenants  of  the 
dark-room.  To  investigators  of  the  philosophical  grasp  of 
Mr.  Lea  and  Captain  Abney  the  sensitive  plate  has  been 
a  starting-point  for  researches  in  physics,  chemistry,  and 
optics,  all  brought  to  converge  upon  the  modern  triumphs 
of  light  as  a  limner.  The  supreme  advantage  of  photog- 
raphy as  an  instructor  is  that  experimental  work  is  its  very 
basis,  and  that  results  of  some  kind  or  other  are  always 
visible. 

It   is   often  laid  to  the  charge  of  the  camera  that  it  has 
dealt  drawing  a  mortal  blow — that  the  free-hand  sketch  is 
becoming  more  and  more   rare.      Yet  if 
the   skill  of  the   draughtsman   is   less  in  Pictorial  Art. 

request  than  of  old,  it  must  be  admitted 
that  the  quality  of  drawing  has  distinctly  improved  under 
the  pitiless  rivalry  of  the  photograph.      Bad   drawing  and 


306  SWIFTNESS   AND   SCOPE 

faulty  perspective  are  tolerated  no  more,  even  when  a 
good  colourist  displays  them,  for  to-day  everybody  has 
been  educated  by  the  camera  to  require  that  creative  art, 
no  matter  how  high  it  may  rise,  shall  nevertheless  be 
grounded  in  truth  of  representation.  In  so  far  as  the  cam- 
era has  displaced  the  pencil,  where  there  is  time  and  op- 
portunity for  a  sketch,  the  fact  is  of  a  piece  with  the 
unceasing  encroachments  of  mechanism  upon  handicraft. 
Such  supersedures  make  us,  in  the  main,  richer;  but  as 
new  gains  are  heaped  on  our  panniers  they  throw  to  the 
ground  more  than  one  golden  heritage. 

It  is  a  sound  dictum  of  art  that  only  those  who  draw 
ever  really  see,  and  if  the  task  of  limning  is  transacted  by 
machinery,  much  priceless  education  of  the  eye,  the  hand, 
and  the  brain  is  unquestionably  missed.  Wherever  the 
camera  has  induced  any  one  to  lay  down  the  pencil  or  the 
brush,  who  might  have  wielded  it  with  power,  it  has  done 
harm.  But  it  is  debatable  whether  very  many  souls  that 
have  felt  the  stirrings  of  creative  faculty  have  ever  allowed 
them  to  be  cramped  or  stifled  by  photography.  The  irre- 
pressible skill  of  the  sketcher  is  a  possession  of  the  few, 
the  deftness  of  the  camerist  is  for  the  many. 

The  camera  every  day  becomes  a  more  and  more  im- 
portant means  of  bringing  to  the  illustrator,  the  designer, 
the  painter,  the  sculptor,  the  elements  of  their  composi- 
tions. Beginning  with  sound  and  accurate  representations 
of  reality,  the  pencil  proceeds  to  their  idealisation,  its  suc- 
cess turning  upon  the  extent,  variety,  and  truth  of  the 
transcripts  from  nature.  Just  as  a  novelist  like  Scott,  a 
poet  like  Tennyson,  rises  to  imaginative  flights  all  the 
more  assured  and  convincing  for  his  close  ami  patient  ob- 
servation of  a  pebbly  beach,  a  curling  breaker,  so  the  eye 
quick  to  catch  a  hint  in  the  ripple  of  a  wave,  the  whorl  of 
a  fern,  the  trail  of  a  vine,  the  sunbeam  bursting  from  a 
cloud,  can  store  a  photographic  note-book  with  a  thousand 


PICTORIAL    PHOTOGRAPHY  307 

outlines   for   subsequent  elaboration,   often  when   there   is 
neither  time  nor  place  for  a  pencil  sketch,  however  rapid. 

Because  observed  and  recorded  truth  gains  ineffable 
charm  when  transmuted  by  the  mind  and  soul  of  an  artist, 
his  works  and  those  of  the  photographer  occupy  two  dis- 
tinct worlds.  Says  Mr.  Frederick  Crowninshield :  "  The 
greater  the  triumphs  of  photography  over  nature,  the 
greater  the  necessity  for  the  emphasis  of  the  artistic  quali- 
ties. Photography  cannot  by  its  graphic  accuracy  rout 
the  born  artist,  who  must  be  just  as  accurate  in  the  ren- 
dering of  his  soul's  images  as  the  sensitive  plate  is  in  the 
glassing  of  nature's  facts."  And  yet,  while  the  spheres  of 
fine  art  and  of  the  camera  thus  remain  apart,  they  touch 
each  other  at  more  points  than  one.  Everybody  who  has 
seen  the  recent  photographic  exhibitions  in  Paris,  London, 
and  New  York  is  aware  that  pictorial  photography  has 
lately  taken  a  notable  stride  forward.  Fetters  that  ten 
years  ago  seemed  of  iron  rigidity  have  been  relaxed  in  a 
remarkable  degree.  By  dint  of  the  widest  play  of  chemi- 
cal experiment,  by  locally  modifying  the  developing  and 
printing  processes,  a  new  school  of  camerists  have  attained 
results  of  a  value  and  beauty  impossible  in  the  days  of  the 
albumen  print.  The  portrait  of  Charles  Darwin  by  Mrs. 
Cameron,  of  Mr.  Eickemeyer  by  his  son,  of  Sir  Edward 
Burne-Jones  by  Mr.  Frederick  Hollyer,  together  with  the 
landscapes  of  Mr.  Alfred  Stieglitz  and  Mr.  George  Davison, 
show  us  the  work  of  artists  who  have  chosen  to  work  with 
platinum  and  silver  salts,  when  they  might  with  success  have 
devoted  themselves  to  the  pencil  and  the  brush.1  "  The 
West  Wind  "  (Plate  XIII),  by  Mr.  J.  Whitall  Nicholson  of 
Philadelphia,  is  an  excellent  example  of  a  picture  created  by 
photography. 

1  Mr.  Alfred  Stieglitz  has  an  illustrated  article  on  "  Pictorial  Photography" 
in  Scribners1  Magazine,  November,   1899. 

A  capital  paper  on  "  The  Relation  of  Photography  to  Art,"  by  Mr.  James 
Craig,  appeared  in  the  Photographic  Times,  June,  1899. 


308  SWIFTNESS    AND   SCOPE 

Mr.  George  G.  Rockwood,  the  well-known  photographer 
of   New   York,   has   recently   perfected  a  simple    mock    of 
bringing    the    camera    to    the    aid    of    a 
Photo-scuipture.       sculptor  as  he  creates  a  portrait  in  bas- 
relief.     In  a  moderately  lighted  room  he 
prepares  a  flat  slab  of  clay,  upon  which  is  projected  from  a 
stereopticon  a  strongly  illuminated  portrait — just  as  in  the 
ordinary  illustration  of  a  lecture.     With  this  aid  the  mod- 
eller executes  his  task  at  a  pace  and  with  a  verity  of  result 
not  otherwise  possible.    A  bas-relief  of  President  McKinley, 
produced  in  this  way,  is  life-like. 

In  co-operation  with  a  friend  Mr.  Rockwood  has  arrived 
at  a  method  of  producing  small  effigies,  two  inches  or  less 
in  diameter,  employing  photograph}'  solely  from  first  to 
last.  The  degree  of  relief  obtained  may  be  considerably 
higher  than  that  of  the  coins  of  the  United  States.  Any 
carefully  modelled  design  or  drawing  may  be  used,  and 
indeed  anything  whatever  that  can  be  well  photographed. 
This  singular  and  novel  art  has  not  yet  been  disclosed  to 
the  public  in  its  details.  In  its  essence  it  takes  advantage 
of  a  property  for  many  years  invaluable  to  the  carnerist  — 
the  solubility  of  bichromated  gelatin  as  affected  by  ex- 
posure to  light.  This  solubility,  varying  as  it  does  with 
every  degree  of  illumination  from  the  shadows  to  the  high 
lights  of  an  image,  enables  that  image  to  be  registered  in 
relief  with  an  effect  such  as  hitherto  has  been  won  only  by 
protracted  toil  with  the  graver. 

As  we   noted   in  the  last   chapter,  one  of  the  worthiest 

tasks  which  can  be  assumed  by  either  the  amateur  or  the 

professional   photographer  is  the  repro- 

The  camera  and  the     duction  of  the  masterpieces   of   fine  art. 

Engraver.  This,   not   so   long  ago,  was    the   field   of 

the  engraver;  to-day  his  skill  is  largely 

in  demand,  not  for  engraving,  pure  and  simple,  but  for  an 

alliance  with  photography.     In  a  noteworthy  case  there  is  no 


AN   ALLY    OF    LITERATURE  309 

rivalry  between  the  burin  and  the  camera,  but  instead  only- 
co-operation  guided  by  the  rarest  skill  and  intelligence. 
The  superb  copies  of  Italian,  Dutch,  Flemish,  and  English 
paintings  by  Timothy  Cole  are  produced  from  photo- 
graphed blocks  upon  which  the  colour  values  are  carefully 
restored  ;  the  artist  then  proceeds  to  engrave  these  blocks 
with  the  originals  before  him. 

At   many  points   graphic   art   and  literature  join  hands. 
The  written  like  the  spoken  word,  for  all  its  power,  has  a 
limited    dominion.      Words    cannot    de- 
lineate  a   coast-line    or  a  hill,  repeat   a       a  Handmaiden  to 
sunset,  or  portray  a  human  face.      Pho-  Literature, 

tography,  the  new  and  universal  lan- 
guage, united  to  words,  completes  their  meaning  with  the 
effect  that  the  whole  of  truth  is  matched  and  told  as  never 
before.  The  worthiest  fruitage  of  primitive  picturing  is 
undoubtedly  the  art  of  writing.  Incalculable  though  the 
value  of  writing  may  be,  and  of  its  offspring  printing,  their 
characters  have  lost  much  in  the  conventions  which  make 
it  impossible  to  detect  the  likeness  of  a  thing  in  its  name. 
Professor  Scripture  of  Yale  University  in  a  series  of  tests 
has  found  reason  to  believe  that  the  acquisition  of  a  foreign 
tongue  can  be  hastened  threefold  when  pictures  accom- 
pany the  words.  Comenius,  two  centuries  ago,  was  one 
of  the  first  teachers  to  add  pictures  to  books.  For  nearly 
two  hundred  years  the  cost  of  illustration  forbade  anything 
but  the  most  infrequent  imitation  of  his  example.  To-day, 
thanks  to  photography,  written  language  resumes  its  an- 
cient alliance  with  the  picture.  Every  book  the  better  for 
illustration  is  illustrated  ;  while  the  word  spoken  by  the  in- 
structor or  the  entertainer  is  as  helpfully  supplemented  by 
the  photographic  slide.  Among  the  instruments  which 
give  recorded  science  its  new  verity,  the  camera  is  one  of 
the  chief. 

The  man  of  letters  is  an  artist  whose  studio  is  the  library, 


310  SWIFTNESS    AND   SCOPE 

who  works  with  the  pen  instead  of  the  brush.  He,  too, 
owes  a  weighty  debt  to  the  camera.  It  gives  him,  on 
nominal  terms,  facsimiles  of  the  rarest  printed  books  in 
the  Bodleian  Library  at  Oxford.  In  Mr.  B.  F.  Stevens's 
reproductions  of  Manuscripts  in  European  Archives  Relat- 
ing to  America^  the  foundations  of  American  history  are 
bared  at  the  same  moment  to  hundreds  of  students  scat- 
tered throughout  the  world.  The  camera,  too,  convicts 
the  forger  of  documents,  or  of  manuscripts  and  books  not 
less  valuable,  and  serves  to  restore  writing  otherwise 
illegible  through  fading  and  wear.  For  contemporary  an- 
nals the  camera  is  all  too  generous.  It  is  so  prodigal  of 
pictures  as  to  be  embarrassing. 

With  this  glance  at  the  services  of  the  camera  to  art  and 
to  letters,  let  us  now  turn  to  the  tasks  of  the  expert  opera- 
tor who,  in  a  special  field  of  science,  employs  plates  of 
uncommon  qualities. 


CHAPTER    XXII 

THE  WORK  OF  QUICK   PLATES— PHOTOGRAPHIC 
REPRODUCTION 

WHEN  one  looks  out  from  a  fast  express  train  the 
sign-boards  of  the  way-stations  are  quite  illegible, 
the  impressions  formed  by  their  letters  are  too  brief  for 
clear  perception.  Hence  the  disposal 
of  generous  breadths  of  flowers,  shrubs,  vision  is  slow, 
or  gravel,  so  as  to  form  "  Melrose  "  or 
"  Spuyten  Duyvil  "  fifty  or  a  hundred  yards  away  from  the 
track,  and  clearly  to  be  read  in  the  swiftest  running  by. 
In  nature  as  well  as  in  art  there  is  a  world  of  motion  which 
far  transcends  the  narrow  time  limits  of  the  eye's  impressi- 
bility. Here,  as  in  many  another  field,  the  camera  enables 
us  to  see  what  otherwise  were  forever  invisible.  In  the 
three-thousandth  part  of  a  second  the  sun  has  taken  his 
own  portrait,  while  the  momentary  phases  of  eclipses,  solar 
and  lunar,  of  planetary  occupations  and  transits,  have  been 
seized  by  the  dry  plate  in  periods  much  too  short  for  col- 
lodion, and,  therefore,  vastly  too  brief  for  the  pencil  of  the 
sketcher.  Dr.  W.  L.  Elkin  of  Yale  Observatory,  by  tak- 
ing simultaneous  photographs  of  meteors  with  cameras 
remote  from  each  other,  has  established  their  height  as 
being  forty-five  to  sixty-five  miles  from  the  earth. 

With  plates  all  but  instantaneous  the  operator  catches 
the  contour  of  a  bar  of  maple  or  steel  at  the  instant  of  rup- 
ture under  strain,  the  details  of  an  explosion,  the  path  of  a 

3" 


312  OriCK    PLATES 

rocket  through  the  air.  Lord  Rayleigh,  in  the  feat  of 
photographing  a  bursting  bubble,  discovered  that  its  col- 
lapse took  place  in  the  three-hundredth  part  of  a  second. 
The  terrific  power  of  air  when  rushing  along  as  a  tornado 
or  cyclone  has  surpassed,  until  modern  times,  all  means  of 
measurement.  Air  to-day  may  be  observed  as  it  moves 
at  a  pace  so  far  surpassing  that  of  a  tornado,  or  a  cyclone, 
as  readily  to  pierce  the  stoutest  steel.  From  the  photo- 
graphs of  air-disturbances  caused  by  flying  shot,  it  seems 
that  the  missile  never  comes  into  immediate  contact  with 
the  armour-plate  which,  nevertheless,  is  riven  asunder.  It 
appears  that  the  hole  for  the  passage  of  the  shot  is  made 
by  an  envelope  of  air  that  surrounds  the  projectile  and 
travels  with  it.  Strangely  enough,  the  splash  of  the  shot 
as  it  strikes  the  steel  armour  closely  resembles  the  splash 
of  a  marble  dropped  into  milk.  When  nature  draws  her 
parallels  the  lines  may  be  remote  enough  from  each  other ; 
and  clearly  does  she  teach  us  here  that  solids  and  liquids 
which  seem  distinct  and  apart  are  not  so  very  different, 
after  all.  Given  a  projectile  swift  enough  and  the  toughest 
steel  moves  before  it  like  so  much  milk. 

The  American  pioneer  in  the  quick  photography  of  ani- 
mal motion  was  Mr.  E.  Muybridge,  whose  famous  pictures, 
published  by  the  University  of  Pennsyl- 
vania, portray  horses  walking  and  racing. 

.  .  '  .  .  The  Study  of 

birds  in  flight,  athletes  jumping  and  Animal  Motion, 
running.  In  extreme  cases  Mr.  Muy- 
bridge's  exposures  lasted  for  only  the  r)(A,,>  of  a  second. 
His  photographic  arrests  of  movements  too  swift  for  the 
eye  have  enabled  Meissonier  in  France,  and  Remington  in 
America,  to  revise  their  representations  of  animal  motion  — 
with  variously  criticised  effect  If  a  visual  perception,  it  is 
argued,  lasts  one  twenty-fifth  of  a  second,  why  not  match 
it  with  a  picture  secured  in  a  period  not  any  shorter? 
Then,  too,  it  is  added,  the  brain   builds  up  its  impressions 


TOYS   MAY    SUGGEST    MUCH         313 

of  rapid  motion  from  those  phases  which  are  frequently 
repeated.  These,  therefore,  should  be  more  dwelt  upon 
as  pictorial  elements  than  phases  comparatively  rare.  To 
this  it  may  be  responded  that  our  notions  as  to  the  atti- 
tudes of  animals  fleeing  or  flying  have  been  largely  derived 
from  conventional  and  untrue  pictures,  intended  rather  to 
please  the  eye  than  to  inform  the  mind.  As  these  inher- 
ited notions  are  corrected  by  the  camera,  the  feeling  that 
its  deliverances  are  ugly  wears  off  as  we  see  that  they 
stand,  in  part  at  least,  not  for  inaccurate  tradition,  but  for 
truth.  "  Instantaneous  "  photographs  show  us  that  many 
of  the  Japanese  bronzes  of  herons  and  hawks  are  not  gro- 
tesques, as  was  thought  by  their  first  European  and  Ameri- 
can admirers,  but  are  due  to  observation  of  attitudes  too 
brief  for  any  but  the  alert  and  disciplined  eye  of  a  Japa- 
nese modeller. 

Within   the   past  few  years   some  of  the  most   eminent 
men  in  the  ranks  of  science  have  returned  to  the  playthings 
of    their   childhood,  and,    at    first    view, 
with  some  danger  to  their  dignity,  have    philosophers  Re-enter 
begun   the   serious   study   of   the   hoop,  the  Nursery- 

the  top,  the  bubble,  and  the  kite. 
Strange  to  say,  these  simple  objects  have  brought  them 
to  the  limit  of  their  powers,  and  they  confess  that  much 
remains  to  be  understood  regarding  the  toys  that  for  ages 
have  amused  the  youngsters  of  every  clime.  A  boy  four 
years  old  may  notice  that  the  quicker  he  trundles  his  hoop 
the  likelier  it  is  to  stay  upright,  or,  a  little  later  in  his 
round  of  sport,  he  may  remark  that  the  swifter  his  pace  on 
a  bicycle  the  better  assured  is  his  perch.  Both,  he  will 
duly  learn,  are  cases  of  the  same  law.  A  top  in  its  com 
plex  gyrations,  especially  in  those  of  its  "  dying  down," 
requires  many  lengthy  formulae  to  express  the  forces  in 
play. 

More  intricate  still  are  the  impulsions  and  checks  which 


314  QUICK    PLATES 

make  the  paths  of  a  gyroscope  a  paradox  to  everybody 
but  the  mathematician.  These  paths  attentively  studied 
are  found  to  explain  orbits  at  the  extremes  of  vastness  and 
minuteness — those  of  the  planets  in  the  sky,  those  of  the 
particles  in  a  magnet.  Children  scarcely  out  of  their  long 
clothes  manage  to  blow  soap  bubbles,  and  as  the  films  thin 
out  to  fatal  collapse  the  physicist  gets  a  hint  as  to  the  di- 
mensions of  a  molecule,  or  as  they  belt  themselves  into 
mimic  rainbows  he  reads  the  lengths  of  waves  of  light,  or 
employs  them  to  detect  minute  quantities  of  electricity. 
We  smile  when  we  hear  that  grown-up  Chinamen  amuse 
themselves  at  flying  kites,  but  to  fly  kites  as  well  as  they 
do  implies  a  good  deal  of  uncommon  observation.  An 
accomplished  kite-flier  takes  advantage  of  those  upward 
streams  of  air  that  ordinary  dwellers  upon  earth  know  little 
about — streams  which  enable  heavy  birds  to  soar  without 
apparent  effort.  A  toy  sparrow  sold  for  a  dime  is  pro- 
pelled with  muscles  extemporised  from  a  rubber  band. 
Coil  this  rubber  tightly  and  the  bird  will  rise  to  a  lofty 
ceiling.  Let  the  scale  of  this  achievement  be  successfully 
enlarged  and  the  problem  of  man's  reign  in  the  air  is  solved 
forthwith. 

Nearly   a  century  ago,  Plateau,  a   Belgian    physicist   of 

distinction,  devised   a  toy  worthy,  from  its  significance  as 

well    as   its   amusing   power,   to  have   a 

Plateau's  Toy  the  Germ  place  of  honour  beside  the  toj),  the  hoop, 

of  the   Kinetoscope.       and   the   j^  jjj^   &yeTy  ^^  success_ 

ful  toy,  this  of  Plateau's  depends  upon 
motion.  In  its  familiar  form  his  zoetrope,  or  wheel  of  life, 
is  a  cylinder  eight  or  ten  inches  in  width,  about  seven 
inches  high,  and  open  at  the  top.  Around  the  lower  half 
of  its  interior  is  a  series  of  pictures  showing,  let  us  say, 
a  boy  in  the  successive  attitudes  of  a  leap  (Fig.  85). 
These  pictures  are  Looked  at  through  narrow  slits  in  the 
cylinder  while  it  is  revolved  rapidly.      Each  visual  impres- 


THE    ILLUSION    OF   MOTION         315 

sion  of  a  picture  lasts  the  twenty-fifth  of  a  second,  and  be- 
fore it  has  time  to  fade  away  there  is  superposed  on  the 
retina  an  impression  from  the  next  and 
but  slightly  different  picture,  and  so  on 
throughout  the  series.  Because  the  im- 
pressions blend  with  one  another,  the  eye 
seems  to  behold  a  boy  in  quick  motion 
through  the  air.  In  the  first  zoetropes 
the  pictures  were  roughly  executed  wood- 
cuts, not  particularly  well  drawn.  When 
these  were  replaced  by  a  series  of  instan-  Fig.  85. 

taneous    photographs   there    was   a   much  Zoetrope. 

better  illusion  of  motion,  and  the  toy  of  Plateau  began  to 
unfold  its  possibilities. 

Much  remained  to  be  desired  in  the  portrayals  of  the 
zoetrope ;  it  did  not  enter  the  door  that  it  opened.  To 
Marey,  Edison,  and  Lumiere  are  chiefly 
due  the  machines  which  gave  the  camera  The  Photochronograph. 
its  mastery  of  motion — in  addition  to 
its  preceding  conquests  of  form,  colour,  and  solid  relief. 
Marey,  in  his  photochronograph,  has  given  his  attention 
mainly  to  problems  of  science :  he  has  demonstrated  how 
a  cat  manages  so  to  fall  through  the  air  as  to  alight  on  its 
feet;  he  has  analysed  the  movements  of  walking,  running, 
and  swimming.1  In  comparing  the  locomotion  of  man  and 
the  lower  animals  he  has  come  upon  more  than  one  strik- 
ing similarity.  The  eel  in  the  water  and  the  adder  on  the 
ground  move  by  undulations  of  precisely  the  same  kind. 
When  a  tadpole's  tail  drops  off,  its  hind  feet  move  exactly 
as  do  the  limbs  of  a  human  swimmer.  The  engineer,  as 
well  as  the  biologist,  propounds  questions  of  moment  to 
the  Marey  machine.  By  means  of  its  testimony,  M.  Des- 
landres  has  investigated  the  strains  to  which  bridges  are 
subject  under  a  moving  load.  In  one  startling  case  he 
1  Movement.     E.  J.  Marey.     International  Scientific  Series. 


316  QUICK    PLATES 

found  that  when  the  steps  of  a  horse,  harnessed  to  a  car- 
riage, harmonised  in  rhythm  with  the  natural  vibrations  "I 
the  structure,  the  deflection  of  a  bridge  became  thirteen 
times  as  great  as  when  the  horse  and  carriage  stood 
still. 

Strange  stories  come  to  us  from  Hindostan  of  a  wizardry 
which  plants  a  seed  and  obliges  the  stem  to  sprout,  grow, 
blossom,  and  bear  fruit,  all  in  a  few  minutes.  Photography 
displays  an  equal  marvel,  but  substitutes  seconds  for  min- 
utes. M.  Mach,  selecting  a  gourd  of  rapid  growth,  took 
pictures  of  it  twice  a  day  for  fifty  days,  and  when  these 
pictures  were  combined,  zoetrope  fashion,  they  vividly  re- 
called  the  history  of  the  plant.  Apart  from  the  phenomena 
of  growth  proper,  which  were  interesting  enough,  the  leaves 
were  seen  to  turn  to  the  light  in  the  most  natural  manner, 
while  the  relative  repose  of  the  later  stages  of  maturing 
was  clearly  manifest. 

Edison,  in  devising  the  kinetograph,  which  takes  his  pic- 
tures, and  the  kinetoscope,  through  which  the)-  are  viewed, 
has  paved  the  way  for   researches  quite 

The  Kinetoscope.  as  fruitful  as  those  of  Marey,  but  thus 
far  his  selection  of  subjects  has  been  in 
the  field  of  amusement  rather  than  of  instruction.  The 
pictures  of  the  kinetograph  are  taken  at  intervals  of  one 
forty-sixth  of  a  second,  the  exposure  lasting  one-sixtieth 
of  a  second  (Plate  XIV).  In  such  figures  one  gets  an  idea 
of  the  mechanical  resources  upon  which  rest  the  advances 
of  modern  photography.  The  images  duly  impressed  on  a 
narrow  strip  of  celluloid,  which  resumes  its  journey  2760 
times  a  minute,  are  developed  by  carefully  timed  machin- 
ery. When  such  a  strip  is  brought  into  the  kinetoscope, 
and  moved  and  halted  at  precisely  the  same  intervals  as 
those  of  its  impress,  the  illusion  of  movement  is  irresistibly 
conveyed.  By  means  of  a  stereopticon  the  pictures  are 
thrown  upon  a  screen  with  vivid  effect,  especially  in  recall- 


Plate  XIV. 

EDISON    KINETOGRAPHIC    PICTURES. 
A  dance. 


ECLIPSES   REPEATED  317 

ing  the  swift  motion  of  water — the  dash  of  breakers  against 
a  cliff,  the  rush  and  tumult  of  the  rapids  and  falls  of  Niag- 
ara, the  ebullition  and  subsidence  of  a  Yellowstone  geyser. 
Of  course,  where  the  movements  depicted  are  comparatively 
slow  the  pictures  have  their  best  opportunity  to  fuse  with- 
out the  provoking  breaks  and  glinting  of  an  ordinary 
series.1 

An  astronomer  it  was  who,  as  long  ago  as  1874,  came 
within  an  ace  of  inventing  the  kinetoscope.  In  that  year 
M.  Janssen  was  able  to  determine  the 
phases  of  Venus  as  she  crossed  the  solar  The  Pilgrims  of  the  Sky. 
disc  by  means  of  a  succession  of  instan- 
taneous photographs.  Had  he  placed  these  in  a  zoetrope 
the  transit  of  the  planet  would  have  reappeared  the  mo- 
ment that  the  toy  was  rotated.  Now  that  the  kinetoscope 
and  its  sister,  the  kinetograph,  have  come  to  virtual  per- 
fection, astronomers  adopt  both  in  bringing  before  popular 
audiences  many  splendid  phenomena  until  lately  known 
solely  to  the  telescopic  observer.  Large  assemblies  in 
many  great  cities  of  the  world  are  to-day  aroused  to  en- 
thusiasm as  the  weird  splendours  of  a  solar  eclipse  are  thus 
recalled  before  their  eyes.  We  are  promised  next  a  simi- 
lar view  of  the  sun  in  its  full  swing  of  rotation,  spots  and 
all ;  this  would  not  be  more  marvellous  than  M.  Flamma- 
rion's  pursuing  the  moon  in  its  movements  across  the 
heavens  from  sunset  to  sunrise,  and  bidding  it  repeat  the 
pilgrimage  on  canvas. 

In  humbler  walks  than  those  of  the  sky,  the  photography 
of  motion  has  been  widely  utilised.  It  catches  the  move- 
ments of  the  lips  and  tongue,  and  repeats  them  without 
variation  or  weariness  for  the  instruction  of  deaf-mutes. 
It  teaches  the  arts  of  swimming,  driving,  and  piano-play- 

1  Detailed  information,  fully  illustrated,  is  given  in  Living  Pictures,  by 
Henry  V.  Hopgood.  London,  Optician  and  Photographic  Trades  Review 
Office,    1899. 


3i8  QUICK    PLATES 

ing;   it  tells  how  the  Deccan  peasant  plies  the  shuttle  for 

the  fabric  so  like  gossamer  that  it  is  known  as  the  "  woven 

wind,"  and    how  the  Australian    throws 

a  M         a  p  .uf  i     the  boomerang  so  that  it   returns  to  his 

A  New  and  Faithful  ° 

instructor.  fCet.  '    It  registers  the  uneasy  sliding  of 

the  hull  of  a  man-of-war  as  it  Leaves  its 
launching-cradle  for  the  sea.  It  promises  to  aid  the  art  of 
medicine  by  portrayals  of  tetanus  and  epilepsy  to  be 
studied  and  compared  at  leisure.  M.  Doyen,  a  distin- 
guished French  surgeon,  has  committed  all  the  details  of  a 
capital  operation  to  kinetographic  films,  with  a  teaching 
effect  nearly  as  satisfactory  as  if  the  students  stood  beside 
the  operating-table. 

In  the  field  of  mechanics  the  reproduction  of  movement 
opens  quite  as  wide  a  door  as  that  of  an  isolated  view, 
especially  now  that  the  process  of  obtaining  kinetographic 
films  has  been  much  simplified.  The  kinetoscope  may 
easily  magnify  mechanical  motions  which  are  thoroughly 
mysterious  to  most  of  us,  albeit  that  they  take  place  in  the 
commonest  machines.  Let  the  action  of  a  type-writer,  a 
sewing-machine,  a  printing-press,  or  a  trolley  motor  be 
purposely  retarded,  and  a  series  of  its  photographs  would 
resolve  many  an  every-day  puzzle. 

The  race  is  not  always  to  the  swift;    it   is  with   plates 

of  old-fashioned  slowness  that  composite  photographs  are 

secured    with    their    singular    creations, 

composite  Photo-  unknown  before  the  camera  gave  them 
graphs.  birth.      An  operator  reduces  his  light  so 

that  a  plate  will  require  twenty  seconds 
for  a  complete  impression.  Twenty  faces,  either  directly 
or  from  good  negatives,  and  all  in  tin-  same  position,  are 
successively  imprinted  upon  it,  each  tor  a  single  second; 
the  result  is  to  "  bring  into  evidence  all  the  traits  in  which 
there  is  agreement,"  and  to  leave  "but  a  ghost  of  a  trace 
of  individual  peculiarities,"  as  stated  by  Mr.  Francis  Gal- 


COMPOSITE    PORTRAIT    OF   EIGHT    MEMBERS    OF   THE 
NATIONAL   ACADEMY   OF   SCIENCES. 


TYPICAL    FACES    CREATED  319 

ton,  the  inventor  of  the  process.1  Hence  a  striking  addi- 
tion to  the  portrait  gallery  of  mankind — in  typical  faces  of 
school-girls,  philosophers,  physicians,  Saxon  soldiers,  mo- 
tormen,  Apaches,  or  men  of  science  (Plate  XV).2 

A  critic  may  ask,  Are  these  composites  really  typical? 
Verification  is  easy.  Select  a  class  to  be  photographed — 
Indians,  firemen,  or  any  other  you  please.  Choose  at 
random  twenty  of  their  faces  and  make  from  them  a  com- 
posite. Then  take  haphazard  another  twenty  faces  from 
the  same  class  and  from  them  obtain  a  second  composite. 
The  first  and  second  pictures  will  resemble  each  other  so 
closely  as  to  leave  no  doubt  of  the  essential  truth  and  sci- 
entific worth  of  the  process.  Clearly  the  day  cannot  be 
far  off  when  physiognomy  will  have  a  basis  in  unimpeach- 
able fact — when  the  conventional  caricatures,  to-day  sadly 
overworked  as  national  types,  will  disappear  for  good  and 
all.  When  we  see  the  face  of  a  stranger  and  classify  it  as 
that  of  a  Frenchman  or  a  Swede,  we  do  so  from  residual 
remembrances  which  in  their  first  estate  may  have  been 
but  few  and  not  fairly  representative,  while  subject  to  the 
distortion  and  wear  that  mar  all  the  mintage  of  the  mem- 
ory, however  deep  and  clear  its  original  stamp.  Just  as 
truth  has  been  substituted  for  tradition  in  the  case  of  animal 
movement,  so  we  shall  here  replace  vague  impressions  of 
foreigners  and  of  special  classes  at  home  by  exact  and 
easily  compared  pictures.  For  truth  very  considerably 
beautified  we  must,  however,  be  prepared.  Dr.  H.  P. 
Bowditch,  in  the  illustrations  which  accompany  his  arti- 
cle, "Are   Composite   Photographs   Typical  Pictures?"  in 

1  Nature,  May  23,  1878.  The  subject  is  further  developed  in  his  Inquiries 
into  Hitman  Faculty,  published  in  1883. 

-  Plate  XV  is  from  a  composite  photograph  by  Mr.  Thomas  W.  Smillie, 
chief  photographer  to  the  United  States  National  Museum,  Washington  ;  it 
represents  eight  members  of  the  National  Academy  of  Sciences  —  Spencer  F. 
Baird,  Henry  L.  Abbot,  Charles  A.  Young,  A.  S.  Packard,  H.  B.  Hill,  J.  M. 
Crafts,  George  J.  Brush,  and  William  Ferrel. 


320  QUICK    PLATES 

McClurcs  Magazine  for  September,  1894,  has  shown  how 
much  handsomer  are  the  composites  derived  from  Wend 
soldiers,  a  dinner  club  of  Boston  physicians,  and  from 
horse-car  drivers,  than  the  individual  faces  united  to  create 
them.  This  effect  is  explained  by  Mr.  Galton,  who  points 
out  that  the  features  of  a  composite  are  always  regular, 
since  the  irregularities,  due  to  individual  peculiarities, 
vanish  from  the  final  picture. 

Mr.  Galton,  in  his  original  description  of  composite  pho- 
tography, threw  out  a  hint  well  worth  recalling.      He  said 
that  the  camera  might  easily  secure  a 
The  Quest  or    x-      portra.it  which  would   rival  the   work  of 

pression.  r 

the  brush.  It  is  the  characteristic  ex- 
pression of  a  face  which  commonly  defies  the  photog- 
rapher, and  which  gives  the  thoughtfully  painted  canvas  all 
its  value.  Now,  if  a  photograph  be  taken  at  twenty  differ- 
ent times,  say  a  day  apart,  the  setness  of  an  ordinary  pose 
will  vanish,  and  in  the  various  play  of  natural  expression 
the  man  himself  will  stand  forth,  somewhat  as  it  he  gave  a 
good  painter  a  score  of  sittings.  In  brief,  the  faculty  of 
such  a  painter  rests  very  largely  in  his  brain  as  the  ana- 
logue of  the  composite  camera  in  giving  saliency  to  what 
in  a  face  is  really  telling,  in  dropping  out  of  view  the  self- 
conscious  stare  which  a  sitter  may  have  at  the  first  seance, 
and  which  is  too  evident  in  many  single-impression  photo- 
graphs. Much  was  done  for  portraiture  when  the  time  of 
photography  was  lowered  to  virtual  instantaneity,  so  as  to 
catch  the  features  at  their  best,  and  before  fatigue  had 
lined  them;  something  more  may  be  accomplished  by 
those  willing  to  take  the  trouble  to  add  composite  to 
simple  portraiture.  A  great  deal  may  be  said  about  the 
lofty  applications  of  the  camera;  just  as  much  may  be  told 
regarding  the  exalted  work  of  fire.  But  as  common 
every-day  cooking,  to  so  great  a  critic  as  Lord  Kelvin,  far 
outranks  every  other  task  of  flame,  so  the  production  of 
ordinary  likenesses  of  the  plain  people  continues  to  be  the 


MAY    PHOTOGRAPHY    PREDICT?    321 

principal  mission  of  the  pencil  of  light.  Inasmuch  as  Mr. 
Galton's  suggestion  may  better  the  practice  of  photo- 
graphic portraiture,  let  it,  therefore,  be  heard  with  respect 
and  receive  the  careful  tests  it  deserves. 

Sometimes  a  composite,  due  to  combining  the  portraits 
of  a  father  and  mother,  yields  a  picture  bearing  a  striking 
resemblance  to  their  children.  In  a  lower  branch  of  the 
tree  of  life,  Mr.  Galton  proposes  experiments  with  a  view 
to  being  able  to  predict  the  effect  of  crossing  particular 
strains  of  horses  and  cattle. 

When  an  impression, — a  portrait,  a  landscape,  or  aught 
else, — has  been  secured  on  a  photographic  plate,  it  is  often 
desirable  to  reproduce   it  in  some  inex- 
pensive form  Suited  tO  the  printing-preSS.    Photographic  Reproduc- 
.  ....  tion  :  Its  Beginnings 

In  its  early  days  photographic  printing  with  Ni^pce. 

was  restricted  to  the  methods  still  in 
vogue  for  common  portraiture.  A  negative,  and  every 
positive  derived  from  it,  had  to  take  its  deliberate  way 
through  a  succession  of  fixing,  toning,  and  cleansing  baths. 
Was  there  a  feasible  mode  by  which  light  could  yield  a 
picture  in  relief  for  use  in  the  common  printing-press? 
Fortunately,  yes.  In  this  direction  Niepce  took  a  step  sec- 
ond in  importance  only  to  his  original  exposure  of  a  film  to 
the  action  of  light.  With  a  view  to  reproduction  he  coated 
a  copper  plate  with  asphalt,  and  impressed  it  with  a  picture 
in  his  camera.  The  places  not  exposed  to  light  remained 
soluble,  and  on  being  washed  away  left  bare  parts  of  the 
copper  surface,  which  he  then  etched  for  use  in  a  printing- 
press.  Heliographs,  as  he  styled  the  resulting  pictures, 
were  found  among  his  papers  after  his  death,  and  prove 
how  completely  he  had  grasped  not  only  the  production 
but  the  reproduction  of  a  luminous  image.1 

1  Daguerreotypes,  despite  the  extreme  delicacy  of  their  relief,  may  easily 
and  without  the  slightest  injury  be  copied  in  a  suitable  plating  bath.  A  feeble 
current — which  occupies  two  days  for  its  task — is  best. 


322    PHOTOGRAPHIC    REPRODUCTION 

His  etching  process  is,  as  we  shall  presently  note,  at  the 
foundation  of  many  photo-printing  methods  now  highly 
developed  and  widely  popular,  of  which  only  a  few  can 
here  be  mentioned.  There  was  an  early  divergence  from 
Niepce's  choice  of  asphalt  in  favour  of  a  substance  possess- 
ing the  same  susceptibility  in  a  much  higher  degree.  This 
was  the  compound  of  gelatin  and  bichromate  of  potas- 
sium, discovered  by  Ponton  in  1839.  A  film  of  this  sub- 
stance may  be  much  thicker  than  a  film  of  asphalt,  and, 
what  is  of  greater  importance,  it  can  be  much  more  quickly 
impressed  with  an  image ;  when  the  gelatin  is  dissolved 
away  from  the  portions  not  acted  on  by  light,  the  relief 
which  remains  can  be  employed  as  a  mould  from  which  to 
make  a  cast  in  metal  for  the  ordinary  printing-press.  In  a 
second  method,  now  little  used,  the  unhardened  gelatin 
is  not  washed  out  with  a  solvent,  but  is  carefully  swollen 
with  water;  from  the  projections  thus  formed  a  metal  re- 
lief is  taken  for  the  printer's  use.  A  process  at  once 
simple  and  excellent  in  its  results  is  to  apply  printers'  ink 
directly  to  a  gelatin  plate  when  it  leaves  the  camera ;  the 
ink  is  absorbed  solely  in  those  lines  and  dots  of  the  gelatin 
which  have  been  protected  from  light.  For  quick  news- 
paper work  there  is  recourse  to  zinc,  and  a  reversion  to  the 
original  plan  of  Niepce.  A  photograph  is  transferred  to 
the  metal  in  printers'  ink,  and  this  ink,  as  it  resists  the  acid 
of  an  etching  bath,  leaves  the  uncorroded  metal  beneath  it 
as  a  plate  in  relief  for  the  press. 

For  the  incomparably  more  delicate  work  of  photogra- 
vure, art  is  indebted  to  Fox-Talbot  as  the  chief  pioneer. 
He  coated  a  metal  plate  with  the  compound  of  gelatin 
and  bichromate  of  potassium,  and,  after  he  had  impn 
it  with  an  image  in  the  usual  way,  immersed  the  plate  in 
an  etching  fluid.  Where  light  exerted  no  effect  the  film 
allowed  the  liquid  to  pass  readily;  where  the  light  had 
acted  to  the  full   the  gelatin  was  impervious.      Between 


PRINTS    UNFADING  323 

these  extremes  of  light  and  darkness  there  were  all  degrees 
of  resistance  to  the  passage  of  the  biting  fluid.  The  prin- 
cipal mode  of  modern  photogravure  is  Klic's  modification  of 
Fox-Talbot's  process ;  the  film  of  chromated  gelatin,  hard- 
ened by  the  action  of  light,  is  transferred  to  a  metal  plate 
after  exposure.  The  gelatin  which  remains  unaffected 
by  light,  and  therefore  insoluble,  can  thus  be  readily 
washed  away  with  warm  water,  leaving  on  the  metal  plate 
a  resist  of  graduated  thickness.  By  the  utmost  nicety  of 
manipulation  such  a  plate  is  capable  of  reproducing  in  ink 
almost  all  the  beauty  of  an  original  masterpiece. 

Another  remarkable  branch  of   reproductive  art   is   due 
to  Poitevin,  who,  in    1855,  was   the   first  to   incorporate  a 
pigment  with  a  film  of  sensitised  gela- 
tin.      He    thus    founded   what    has    since       The  Carbon  Process. 

been  splendidly  developed  as  the  carbon 
process.  In  present  practice  a  sheet  of  paper  coated  with 
a  mixture  of  gelatin,  sugar  and  colouring  matter,  is  sensi- 
tised by  being  floated  in  a  solution  of  potassium  bichro- 
mate. At  the  points  where  light  falls  in  the  camera,  the 
tissue  is  hardened  ;  at  points  of  darkness  it  remains  soluble. 
When  the  soluble  portions  are  washed  away  a  picture  is 
left  behind  in  an  unchangeable  pigment.  The  "  gum  bi- 
chromate "  process,  which  of  late  years  has  produced  so 
many  beautiful  results,  is  a  modification  of  the  method  in- 
troduced by  Poitevin. 

Photographic  printing  branches   out   into   many  and  in- 
creasing alliances  with  etching,  engraving,  and  lithography. 
The  simplest  of   them  render  only  lines 
such  as  those  of  an  architect's  plan,  or  of  Half-tone, 

a  manuscript  in  facsimile.     How  can  the 
half-tone,  the  graduated  shadow  so  essential  to   a  picture, 
be  expressed?     The  usual  method  is  to  interpose  between 
the  gelatin  and  the  original  sketch  or  picture  to  be  copied, 
a  network  of  fine  lines  ruled  near  together  on  a  glass  plate, 


}24    PHOTOGRAPHIC    REPRODUCTION 


with  the  effect  that,  if  inspection  be  not  too  close,  a  faithful 
transcript  in  dots  seems  conveyed  to  the  plate.      What  this 

network  or  screen  does  is 
to  break  up  the  impressed 
picture  into  minute  points 
which  catch  the  ink  from 
the  roller  of  the  printing- 
press;  the  interstices  be- 
tween point  and  point  being 
untouched  by  the  ink,  the 
picture  is  presented  in  what 
may  be  considered  as  stip- 
ples of  refined  character. 
In  common  work  the  rul- 
ings of  the  screen  are  about 
eighty  to  the  inch  ;  in  the  il- 
lustration of  the  best  books 
and  magazines  the  rulings 
pIG  gg^  are  twice  as  many,  or  even 

Much  enlarged  from  a  half-tone  portrait      more.      The  portraits  in  this 

ofLord  Kelvin.    From  the  Journalof     volume  areexecuted  inhalf- 

the  Amateur  Photographic  Society  of  -,,.,  • .-     , 

,.  ,  tone.      When  magnified,  as 

Madras.  ° 

in  Fig.  86,  we  can  under- 
stand how  much  the  suggestions  of  the  mind  piece  out  and 
complete  the  crude  outlines  of  a  "  process  "  picture.  "  The 
eye  sees  what  it  brings  with  it  the  power  of  seeing."1 

i  The  United  States  National  Museum,  at  Washington,  contains  an  admira- 
ble collection  of  photographs  illustrating  in  detail  every  application  of  the 
camera,  and  the  chief  reproductive  processes  based  on  photography. 


CHAPTER    XXIII 

THE    PHOTOGRAPHY    OF   THE   SKIES 

DR.  JOHN  W.  DRAPER,  who,  as  we  have  already 
noted,  was  the  first  to  portray  the  human  face  in  the 
camera,  was  also  the  first  to  photograph  a  heavenly  body. 
In  March,  1840,  he  succeeded  in  taking 
pictures  of  the  moon,  which  were  fairly  The  Beginnings, 
good,  considering  the  imperfection  of 
his  instruments.  Five  years  later  Professor  G.  P.  Bond,  at 
Harvard  Observatory,  obtained  clear  portraits  of  the  moon 
with  a  15-inch  refractor,  and  in  so  doing  launched  his  ob- 
servatory on  a  career  of  astronomical  photography  which 
to-day  gives  it  the  lead  in  all  the  world.  From  1865  to 
1875  Mr.  Lewis  M.  Rutherfurd  of  New  York  took  photo- 
graphs of  the  moon  which  for  twenty  years  were  unri- 
valled. At  present  the  moon  is  the  best  photographed  of 
all  celestial  objects,  and  yet  Professor  Barnard  says  that 
the  best  pictures  thus  obtained  come  short  of  what  can  be 
seen  with  a  good  telescope  of  very  moderate  size.  Thus 
far  minute  details  of  the  surface  are  beyond  the  reach  of 
photography,  but  its  accurate  delineation  of  the  less  difficult 
features  is  of  the  highest  value. 

"  The  photography  of  the  surface  features  of  the  planets," 
adds  this  observer,  "  is  in  an  almost  hopeless  condition  at 
present;    yet  much   may  be   expected   when   an   increased 

325 


)i()      PHOTOGRAPHY    OF   THE    SKIES 

sensitiveness  of  plates  has  been  secured."  No  plate  as  yet 
produced  is  fully  responsive  throughout  the  whole  range  ol 
the  telescopic  eye.  Clearly  enough,  the  draughtsman  has 
not  been  ousted  from  every  corner  of  the  observatory  as 
yet,  although  in  most  of  its  tasks  his  services  have  long 
ceased  to  be  required  ;  in  one  of  them  the  embarrassment 
of  the  camera  is  not  a  lack  but  an  excess  of  light.  Pro- 
fessor Janssen  of  the  observatory  at  Meudon,  near  Paris, 
long  ago  succeeded  in  making  the  best  photographs  of 
portions  of  the  sun's  surface ;  he  has  always  used  the  wet- 
plate  process,  which,  from  its  slowness,  gives  the  best  re- 
sults with  the  intense  solar  beam. 

Just  at  the  turning-point  between  old  and  new  methods 
of  recording  the  phenomena  of  the  sky,  there  was  a  con- 
trast between  them  which  was  decisive. 
oid  and  New  Methods    On  July  29,   1878,  a  total  solar  eclipse 
of  Picturing  Eclipses.     was    S()    wjt]eiv    observable    throughout 

the  United  States  that  forty  to  fifty 
drawings  were  made  of  the  corona,  duly  published  by  the 
United  States  Naval  Observatory,  Washington,  two  years 
afterward.  Says  Professor  Barnard :  "  On  examination 
scarcely  any  two  of  them  would  be  supposed  to  represent 
the  same  object,  and  none  of  them  closely  resembled  the 
photographs  taken  at  the  same  time.  The  method  of  reg- 
istering the  corona  by  free-hand  drawing  under  the  condi- 
tions attending  a  total  eclipse  received  its  death-blow  at 
that  time,  for  it  showed  the  utter  inability  of  the  average 
astronomer  to  sketch  or  draw  under  such  circumstances 
what  he  really  saw."  Compare  the  pencil  with  the  camera 
in  one  of  its  recent  achievements.  On  January  22,  1898, 
Mrs.  Maunder,  with  a  lens  only  one  and  a  half  inches  in 
diameter,  secured  impressions  of  swiftly  moving  coronal 
streamers  about  five  million  miles  in  length.  It  is  evident 
enough  that  the  pencil  cannot  compete  with  the  camera  in 
depicting  the  extremely  brief  phenomena  of  an  eclipse,  and 


THE   UNSEEN   BROUGHT   TO   VIEW  327 

it  is  also  plain  that  an  instrument  of  moderate  size  and  cost 
is  quite  sufficient  for  good  work. 

Often  the  images  of  the  telescope  are  not  fleeting,  and 
remain  visible  quite  long  enough  for  a  draughtsman  to 
catch  their  outlines  ;  but  other  circumstances  than  those  of 
time  forbid  the  use  of  his  pencil.  Professor  E.  E.  Barnard 
has  taken  observations  at  the  Lick  Observatory  when  the 
thermometer  has  stood  at  —  320  C.  At  such  a  tempera- 
ture a  camera  may  be  used,  while  to  employ  a  pencil  is 
out  of  the  question. 

In  many  tasks,  where  extremes  of  cold  or  heat  do  not 
trouble  him,  the  astronomer  is  glad  to  avail  himself  of  the 
quickness  of  the  sensitive  plate,  which  so 
far  transcends  the  celerity  of  the  eye.  An  Untiring  Eye. 
If  in  its  rapidity  of  response  a  quick  plate 
is  superior  to  the  retina,  it  has  the  further  advantage  of 
being  exempt  from  fatigue.  Light  much  too  feeble  to  ex- 
cite vision  can  impress  an  image  on  a  sensitive  plate  if  it 
be  given  time  enough.  During  four  hours  ending  at  two 
o'clock  in  the  morning,  M.  Zenger  has  taken  photographs 
of  Lake  Geneva  and  Mont  Blanc  when  nothing  was  per- 
ceptible to  the  eye.  Turned  to  the  heavens,  this  power  to 
grasp  the  invisible  brings  to  view  a  breadth  of  the  universe 
unseen  by  the  acutest  observer  using  the  most  powerful 
telescope.  Let  the  lenses  of  such  an  instrument  be  directed 
to  a  definite  point  in  the  sky  by  accurate  machinery,  and 
they  will  maintain  their  gaze  with  accumulating  effect  upon 
a  sensitive  plate  through  all  the  hours  of  a  long  night,  and, 
if  need  be,  will  renew  their  task  the  next  night,  and  the 
next. 

In  this  work  the  utmost  mechanical  precision  is  impera- 
tive. Professor  E.  E.  Barnard  says  that  if  the  motion  of  a 
guiding  clock  varies  as  much  as  rooo  of  an  inch  during  an 
exposure  of  from  three  to  eight  hours,  the  images  are 
spoiled  and  worthless.      It  was  only  after  repeated   failure 


328      PHOTOGRAPHY    OF   THE   SKIES 

that  mechanicians  were  able  to  make  a  clock  sufficiently 
accurate  to  keep  a  star  image  at  one  fixed  point  on  a  plate. 
Steadily  caught  at  one  unchanging  place,  a  ray,  however 
feeble,  goes  on  impressing  the  pellicle  of  a  plate,  minute 
after  minute,  hour  after  hour,  night  after  night,  until  at  last, 
by  sheer  persistence,  the  light  from  a  star  or  a  nebula  too 
faint  to  be  detected  in  a  telescope  imprints  its  image. 
Some  images  have  been  obtained  as  the  result  of  twenty- 
five  hours'  exposure  during  ten  successive  nights,  so  as  to 
get  impressions  from  as  near  the  zenith  as  possible,  where 
atmospheric  disturbances  work  least  harm  because  atmo- 
spheric paths  are  there  at  their  shortest.  Myriads  of 
heavenly  bodies  have  thus  been  added  to  the  astronomer's 
ken,  which,  without  the  dry  plate,  would  probably  have 
remained  unfound  forever.  * 

When  Dr.  Maddox  was  busy  stirring  together  his 
bromides  and  gelatin  he  did  not  know  that  from  his 
bowl  the  universe  was  to  receive  a  new  diameter ; 
but  so  it  has  proved.  The  invention  of  the  telescope 
marks  one  great  epoch  in  the  astronomer's  advance;  an- 
other era,  as  memorable,  dawned  for  him  when  he  added 
to  the  telescope  a  camera  armed  with  a  gelatin  film.  lie- 
gained  at  once  the  power  of  penetrating  depths  of  space 
which  otherwise  would  never  have  sped  the  explorer  a 
revealing  ray.  As  the  camera  outranges  the  eye,  in 
that  very  act  it  surpasses  every  task  of  depiction  which  the 
eye  may  dictate  to  the  hand. 

So  efficient  is  the  scouring  of  the  heavens  by  the  tele- 
scopic camera  that  to  its  plates  is  now  resigned  the  search 
for  those  little  worlds,  or  world-fragments,  known  as  aster- 
oids. The  hunt  is  simplicity  itself.  A  plate  is  exposed  in 
a  camera,  and  directed  by  clockwork  to  a  particular  point 
in  the  sky  for  two  or  three  hours.      Because  the  stars  are 

1  Sec  a  superbly  illustrated  article  by  Professor  E.  E.  Barnard,  Photographic 
Times,  August,  1895, 


THE   NEAREST   ASTEROID  329 

virtually  motionless  in  a  time  so  short,  they  register  them- 
selves as  tiny  round  dots.  The  asteroids,  on  the  other 
hand,  have  an  appreciable  motion  across 

the   field  Of  view,  Somewhat  as   the  moon        Asteroids  Discover 

has,   and   so  they   betray  themselves  as  Themselves, 

minute  but  measurable  streaks.  On 
August  13,  1898,  a  streak  of  this  kind  disclosed  to  Herr 
Witt  at  the  Observatory  of  Urania,  at  Berlin,  that  most 
interesting  and  important  of  all  asteroids,  Eros,  about  ten 
miles  in  diameter,  which  approaches  the  earth  more  closely 
than  any  heavenly  body  but  the  moon.  It  is  expected 
that  observations  of  Eros  will  enable  astronomers  to  re- 
vise with  new  precision  their  computations  of  the  distance 
of  the  sun  and  the  planets.  A  faint  streak  similar  to 
that  observed  by  Herr  Witt  once  told  Professor  Barnard 
that  a  comet  had  passed  in  front  of  his  telescope — a  comet 
so  small  and  flimsy  that  only  a  photographic  plate  could 
see   it.      Early   in    1899   Professor  William   Pickering  thus 

•  •         # 

If ^wmato.  ©(K^O'wtai'  dxttvu^.  'SlXuvu/.  C\ruLO).    ci  jtta/vO.   JfoixluAton.  ^alu^a&.O/VujaK/. 

Fig.  87. 

Satellites  of  Saturn.     Phcebe,  the  ninth,  discovered  by  Professor 

William  Pickering. 

discovered  a  new  satellite  of  Saturn,  making  its  known  ret- 
inue nine  in  number.  This  new  moon  made  its  appearance 
on  four  plates  exposed  with  the  Bruce  telescope  at  Are- 
quipa,  in  Peru.  Its  light  is  so  faint  that  no  telescope  in 
existence  is  powerful  enough  directly  to  disclose  the  tiny 
orb  (Fig.  87). 

Where  direct  vision  is  easy,  the  camera  enables  the  pho- 
tographer to  save  time  in  an  astonishing  way.  Professor 
Common's  photograph  of  the  moon,  taken  in  forty  minutes, 
rewarded  him  with  as  full  detail  as  had  four  years'  work 


330      PHOTOGRAPHY    OF    THE    SKIES 

with  the  telescope  and  pencil.      Often  an  image  seen  only  in 

part  in  the  telescope  is  completed  with  wonderful  beauty 

in  the  camera.      The  streaming  tail  of  a 

Forty  Minutes  instead    comet  is   frequently  doubled   or  trebled 

of  Four  Years.         in   ien„tri  as  jt  imprints  itself  upon  the 

gelatin  plate.  Brooks's  comet  of  [893, 
in  one  of  its  photographs  taken  with  the  Willard  lens  at 
Lick  Observatory,  showed  its  tail  as  if  beating  against 
a  resisting  medium,  and  sharply  bent  at  riyht  angles  near 
the  end,  as  if  at  that  point  it  encountered  a  stronger  cur- 
rent of  resistance.  Many  nebulae,  those  of  the  Pleiades 
especially,  appear  in  much  greater  extent  and  detail  in  a 
photograph  than  to  an  observer  at  the  eye-piece  of  a  tele- 
scope. Their  rays  are  particularly  rich  in  the  vibrations 
which  affect  the  sensitive  plate,  but  to  which  the  eye  is 
irresponsive.1 

More  than  once  a  word  has  been  said  about  the  unsus- 
pected worth  of  the  incidental ;  celestial  photography  sup- 
plies a  capital  illustration.  In  1882,  at 
Accident  and  Essence,  the  Cape  of  Good  Hope,  when  the  great 
comet  of  that  year  appeared,  it  occurred 
to  Dr.  Gill,  the  director  of  the  observatory,  that  it  might 
be  possible  to  photograph  it.  To  the  telescope,  pointed 
at  the  comet,  a  small  camera  was  accordingly  attached. 
After  a  short  exposure  the  plate  was  developed  and  the 
image  of  the  comet  came  into  view.  So  far  as  is  known, 
this  was  the  first  comet  ever  photographed.  The  plate, 
moreover,  showed  not  only  the  comet  which  had  been 
sought,  but  also  stars  which  were  unsought,  and  that  were 
quite  invisible  in  the  telescope  (Plate  XVI).  From  their 
images,  thus  unwittingly  secured,  came  the  project  ol  a 
new  map  of  the  heavens,  which   should  reveal  its  orbs  to 

1  Address  <>f  Professor  E,    E.  Barnard  as    vice-president  of  Section  A, — 
mathematics  anil  astronomy,  —  American  Association  for  the  Advancement  of 
e,  [898. 


Plate  XVI. 


PHOTOGRAPH    OF   COMET   BY    DR.   DAVID    GILL,    iJ 
With  incidental  portraiture  of  stars  invisible  in  the  telescope. 


FLAME   COLOURS    MEAN    MUCH     331 

the  limit  of  a  plate's  impressibility.  With  the  Observaton 
of  Paris  as  their  centre,  astronomers  throughout  the  world 
are  now  engaged  upon  a  chart  of  the  sky  which  will  con- 
tain at  least  twenty  million  stars.  In  future  generations  a 
comparison  of  the  pictures  now  in  hand  with  pictures  of 
later  production  will  have  profound  interest.  Stellar 
changes  of  place  and  nebular  alterations  of  form  will  indi- 
cate the  laws  of  the  birth,  the  life,  the  death  of  worlds. 

At  the  close  of  the  year  1899  there  were  stored  at  Har- 
vard Observatory  56,000  plates  depicting  the  heavens 
during  every  available  night  beginning  with  1886. 
Doublet  lenses,  of  much  wider  field  than  the  single  lenses 
usually  employed,  have  been  chosen  by  Professor  E.  C. 
Pickering,  the  director,  for  this  work.  Thanks  to  their  use, 
certain  of  the  plates  have  been  found  to  bear  images  of 
Eros,  impressed  at  intervals  for  years  before  the  discovery 
of  the  asteroid  at  Berlin.  These  impressions  indicate  a 
considerable  portion  of  the  orbit  of  the  object.  Records 
of  equal  value  doubtless  remain  to  be  detected  in  this  re- 
markable portrait-gallery  of  the  skies. 

In   the   moments  which   follow  striking  a  match  in  the 
dark,  we    see    in    succession    the    hues   proper   to  burning 
phosphorus,  to  sulphur,  and  to  the  car- 
bon of  the  match-stick.      In  a  display  of      what  colours  Tell, 
fireworks  the   combustibles    are    chosen 
for  a  display  of  colour  much  more  variegated  and  brilliant. 
We  recognise  at  once  the  yellow  flame  of  sodium,  the  crim- 
son  blaze   of  strontium,  the   purple  glitter  of   zinc  aflame. 
These  and  all  other  elements  when  they  reach  glowing  heat 
give   out   light   of   characteristic    hues ;    to    examine  them 
minutely  a  spectroscope  is  employed.      In  its  essence  this 
instrument  is  a  glass  prism  which  sorts  out  with   consum- 
mate nicety  the  distinctions  of  colour  and  line  borne  in  the 
light  of  the  sun,  or  a  star,  or  a  meteor,  or  of  the  fuel  ablaze 
in  a  laboratory  furnace.      Every  ray  as  it  passes  through  a 


332       PHOTOGRAPHY    OF   THE    SKIES 

prism  is  deflected  in  a  degree  peculiar  to  its  colour:  violet 
light,  at  one  end  of  the  rainbow  scale,  is  deflected  most; 
red  light,  at  the  other  end,  is  deflected  least.  It  is  because 
solar  and  stellar  beams  display  the  characteristic  spectra  of 
sodium,  iron,  hydrogen,  and  many  other  terrestrial  ele- 
ments, highly  individualised  as  each  of  them  is,  that  we 
know  that  the  sun  and  the  stars  are  built  of  much  the  same 
stuff  as  the  earth. 

In  passing  from  the  colours  of  the  solar  spectrum  to  its 
many  minute  interruptions,  "  the  new  astronomy  "  began. 
As  photographed  by  Professor  Rowland  upon  sheet  after 
sheet  for  a  total  length  of  forty  feet,  the  spectrum  of  the 
sun  is  crossed  by  thousands  of  dark  lines.  The  interpreta- 
tion of  the  most  conspicuous  of  these  lines  by  Bunsen  and 
Kirchhoff,  in  1859,  marks  an  epoch  in  the  study  of  the 
heavens.  Let  us  approach  their  explanation  by  a  simple 
experiment.  If  we  sing  a  certain  note  upon  the  wires  of 
an  open  piano,  just  that  string  will  respond  which,  it  it  were 
struck,  would  utter  that  note.  Precisely  so  when  we  pass 
from  vibrations  of  sound  to  those  of  light;  a  vapour  when 
cool  absorbs  by  sympathy  those  waves  of  light  which,  if  it 
were  highly  heated,  it  would  send  forth.  Hence  the  dark 
lines  in  the  solar  spectrum  tell  us  what  particular  gases,  at 
comparatively  low  temperatures,  are  stretched  as  an  absorb- 
ing curtain  between  the  inner  blazing  tore  and  outer  space. 
To  choose  a  convincing  example:  when  the  spectrum  of 
the  sun  and  that  of  iron  are  compared  side  by  side  in  the 
same  instrument,  bright  lines  of  the  iron  coincide  with  dark 
lines  of  the  solar  spectrum  (Plate  XVII). 

The  tints  and  lines  of  a  spectrum,  whether  from  the 
sun  or  a  star,  disclose  not  only  the  character  but  the  con- 
sistence of  the  elements  which  send  them  to  the  eye  or  t<> 
the  photographic  plate.  Hydrogen,  for  example,  when  it 
burns  at  ordinary  pressures,  as  it  may  in  the  simplest 
laboratory    experiment,    emits   a   spectrum    of    bright    lines 


DISCLOSURES    OF  THE    SPECTRUM    333 

crossed  by  sharp  thin  lines  of  darkness.  These  bright 
lines,  when  the  gas  has  high  pressure,  broaden  out  and  be- 
come almost  continuous,  so  as  to  resemble  those  emitted 
by  a  glowing  solid.  Hence  an  astronomer  is  told  by  one 
particular  spectrum  that  it  comes  from  a  star  having  a 
highly  condensed  gaseous  core,  while  another  spectrum 
betokens  a  true  nebula — a  vast  body  of  gas  aglow  in  ex- 
treme attenuation.  A  spectroscope,  therefore,  reveals  not 
only  what  a  heavenly  body  is  made  of,  but  also  the  physi- 
cal condition  in  which  its  substance  exists,  whether  as  a 
solid,  a  liquid,  or  a  gas. 

The  lines  in  a  stellar  spectrum  are  liable  not  only  to  be 
broadened  out,  but  to  be  shifted  from  their  normal  place, 
and  this  shifting  has  profound  signifi- 
cance, according  to  a  principle  first  an-  Lines  Out  of  Place 
nounced  by  Christian  Doppler  in  1841.  Disclose  Much- 
If  a  star  is  at  rest,  relatively  to  the  earth, 
the  tints  and  lines  of  the  elements  aglow  on  its  surface  will 
have  positions  in  its  spectrum  as  changeless  as  those  due 
to  the  iron,  or  the  sulphur,  aflame  on  the  chemist's  tray. 
But  if  the  star  is  moving  toward  the  earth,  or  away  from 
it,  the  spectral  lines  will  appear  a  little  to  the  right  or  left 
of  their  normal  position,  and  in  so  doing  disclose  the  rate  of 
approach  or  recession.  To  understand  this  we  have  only 
to  enter  the  field  of  acoustics.  Suppose  that  a  listener 
takes  up  his  post  midway  between  two  railroad  stations 
somewhat  distant  from  each  other.  As  a  locomotive  ap- 
proaches him  let  us  imagine  that  its  whistle  is  blown  con- 
tinuously. To  the  engineer  on  the  foot-board  the  whistle 
has  a  certain  note ;  to  the  listener  who  is  standing  still  the 
whistle  has  a  somewhat  shriller  note,  because  the  motion 
of  the  engine  toward  him  has  the  effect  of  shortening  the 
sound-waves,  and  shrillness  increases  with  the  shortness  of 
such  waves — with  the  greater  number  per  second  which 
he  hears.      If  all  the  engines  of  the  line  have  whistles  ex- 


334      PHOTOGRAPHY    OF   THE   SKIES 

actly  alike,  a  listener  with  his  eyes  shut  can  easily  tell 
whether  it  is  a  freight-train  that  is  advancing,  or  an  ordi- 
nary express,  or  a  "  limited  "  running  at  fifty  miles  an 
hour;  the  quicker  the  train,  the  shriller  the  sound  of  its 
approaching  whistle  (Fig.  88).  Sir  William  Huggins, 
the  pioneer  in  applying  this  principle  to  reading  stellar 
motions,  adopts   a   parallel    illustration :    "  To    a   swimmer 


Fig.  88. 

A,  waves  between  two  points  at  rest  relatively  to  each  other. 
By  waves  between  two  points  at  a  shortening  distance  apart. 
C,  waves  between  two  points  at  a  lengthening  distance  apart. 

striking  out  from  the  shore  each  wave  is  shorter,  and  the 
number  he  goes  through  in  a  given  time  is  greater  than 
would  be  the  case  if  he  stood  still  in  the  water." 

Let  us  now  return  to  the  sister  phenomena  of  light  At 
one  end  of  the  visible  spectrum  the  violet  rays  have  about 
half  the  length  of  the  red  rays  at  the  other  end  of  the  scale ; 
accordingly  about  twice  as  many  violet  as  red  rays  enter 
the  eye  in  a  second.  Let  us  imagine  a  star  like  Betelgeux, 
which,  at  rest,  would  emit  red  rays  solely.  If  such  a  star 
were  to  rush  toward  the  earth  with  the  speed  of  light, 
i  So, 400  miles  a  second,  its  rays  would  be  SO  much  short- 
ened as  to  be  halved  in  length,  and  the  star  would  appear 
\iolet  —  its  characteristic  hues  and  lines  show  Jul;  themselves 
at  one  extreme  of  the  visible  scale  instead  of  at  the  other. 
<  'I  course,  no  star  moves  toward  the  earth  with  more  than 
a  small  fraction  of  the  speed  of  light,  and  yet  so  refined  is 
the  measuring  of  the  displacement  of  spectral  lines  that  a 


STAR   MOTIONS    DETECTED  335 

motion  toward  the  earth  of  somewhat  less  than  one  mile  in 
a  second  can  be  readily  determined.  In  the  case  of  Betel- 
geux  its  movement  toward  the  earth  is  known  to  be  17.6 
miles  a  second,  about  ttooo  part  of  the  velocity  of  light, 
the  displacement  of  its  red  lines  toward  the  violet  end  of 
the  scale  being  about  ttooo  part  of  the  whole  length  of  the 
spectrum.  If,  in  a  contrary  case,  a  star  is  receding  from 
the  earth,  its  spectroscopic  lines  will  be  shifted  toward  the 
red  end  of  the  scale,  just  as  a  locomotive  whistle  falls  to  a 
lower  pitch  as  the  engine  moves  away  from  a  listener 
standing  still.  By  this  method  Gamma  Leonis  is  known 
to  be  travelling  away  from  us  at  the  rate  of  25.1  miles  a 
second.  In  this  unique  power  of  detecting  motion  in  the 
line  of  sight,  the  spectroscope  when  furnished  with  a  sensi- 
tive film  enormously  enhances  the  revealing  power  of  the 
telescope. 

The  sun  was,  of  course,  the  first  heavenly  body  to  have 
its  spectrum    caught    on    a   sensitive    plate.      In    1863   Dr. 
(now  Sir)  William  Huggins  attempted  to 
photograph  the  spectrum  of  a  star.      He        solar  and  stellar 
obtained    a   stain   on   his   plates,  due   to  Spectra, 

the  spectra  of  Sirius  and  Capella,  in 
which,  however,  no  spectral  lines  were  discernible.  In 
1872  Dr.  Henry  Draper  of  New  York  obtained  a  photograph 
of  the  spectrum  of  Vega,  in  which  four  lines  were  shown ; 
this  was  the  first  successful  picture  in  the  series  which 
Dr.  Draper  gave  to  the  world  during  the  following  ten 
years.  Since  his  death,  in  1882,  Mrs.  Draper  has  es- 
tablished the  Draper  Memorial  at  Harvard  Observa- 
tory, for  the  continuance  of  his  labours  on  an  extended 
scale.  The  photographs  by  this  Memorial  owe  much  to 
the  Vogel  method,  by  which  the  plates  are  sensitised  for 
green,  red,  and  yellow  rays.  Were  this  sensibility  to  colour 
still  further  increased,  the  photographs  of  stellar  spectra 
would  tell  a  yet  fuller  story  than  they  do  to-day.      Owing 


336      PHOTOGRAPHY    OF    THE   SKIES 

to  irregular  atmospheric  currents,  the  image  of  a  star  dan- 
cing around  the  narrow  slit  of  a  spectroscope  may  elude 
even  a  practised  observer.  Photograph}',  with  its  summa- 
tion of  recurrent  impressions,  gives  a  perfectly  uniform 
image  of  the  composite  type  which  Mr.  Galton  introduced 
in  human  portraiture.  That  image,  for  all  its  minuteness, 
may  bear  a  most  informing  superscription: 

In  the  northwestern  sky  one  may  observe  the  constella- 
tion of  the  Charioteer — to  most  advantage  in  April  or  May. 

At    Harvard    Observatory,    in    1889,    it 
Twin  stars.  was   remarked   that   a  spectrum   from  a 

star  in  that  constellation,  Beta  Aurigae, 
varied  from  night  to  night  in  a  singular  manner.  The 
cause  was  found  to  be  that  the  light  comes,  not  from  a 
single  star,  but  from  a  pair  of  stars,  periodically  eclipsing 
each  other,  and  having  a  period  of  revolution  of  slightly 
less  than  four  days.  In  determining  the  rate  of  motion  of 
these  stars  as  150  miles  a  second,  their  distance  from  each 
other  as  8,000,000  miles,  and  their  combined  mass  as  two 
and  three-tenth  times  that  of  the  sun,  Professor  Pickering 
regards  the  prism  as  multiplying  the  magnifying  power  of 
the  telescope  about  five  thousand  times.  To  a  telescope 
such  a  double  star  appears  as  but  a  single  point  of  light;  in 
a  spectroscope  each  component  star  reveals  its  own  spec- 
trum. When  the  star  is  approaching  the  earth  its  spectral 
lines  arc  shifted  to  the  violet  end  of  the  scale;  when  the 
star  is  receding  from  the  earth,  its  lines  are  displaced  to 
the  red  end  of  the  scale.  In  the  case  of  Peta  Aurigae  the 
change  in  the  spectrum  is  so  rapid  that  it  is  sometimes 
ptible  in  quickly  successive  photographs,  and  becomes 
very  marked  in  the  course  of  an  evening: 

Plate  XVII  illustrates  tin's  phenomenon.     In  Fig.  1  the  theo- 
retical curve  during  I  )ecember,  1  889,  is  represented  by  the  sinuous 
ibscissas  indicating  times,  and  ordinates  the  corresponding 

separations  of   the  components  "I   the  A' line.      The  black  circles 


1 

1 

-'■■.'                  f     ■        ■                             ? 

11'    '        111 

[l      1 

j  ii  u 

! 

:   11 

i i 

SOLAR  SPECTRUM  COMPARED  WITH  THAT  OF  IRON. 


Plate  XVII. 

SPECTRA    OF    BETA   AURIGA. 
(Seep.  337.) 


THE   TELESCOPE   OUTDONE         337 

represent  the  twenty-seven  photographs  taken  during  this  month, 
their  ordinates  representing  the  result  of  a  rough  measure  of  the 
separation  of  the  lines.  In  no  case  does  the  observed  position  dif- 
fer from  that  given  by  theory  by  more  than  the  accidental  errors  of 
measurement.  Fig.  2  is  a  contact  print  from  the  original  negative 
taken  December  31,  1889,  at  11  h.  5  /;/.,  Greenwich  mean  time. 
Fig.  3  is  an  enlargement  with  cylindrical  lens  of  this  same  nega- 
tive. Fig.  4  represents  a  still  greater  enlargement  of  the  same 
negative,  and  shows  the  K  line  distinctly  double  ;  by  shading  one 
part  of  the  photograph  the  strong  line  a  to  the  left  of  K  is  also 
shown  in  the  enlargement  to  be  double.  .  .  .  Fig.  5  is  a  similar 
enlargement  of  a  negative  taken  December  30,  1889,  at  17  h.  6  m., 
Greenwich  mean  time,  eighteen  hours  previous  to  P'ig.  4.  The  lines 
here  are  single.1 

This  subtile  means  of  detection  is  set  upon  the  track  not 
only  of  double  stars,  but  on  that  of  such  a  star  as  Algol, 
which  is  attended  by  a  planet  so  large  as  to  eclipse  it 
almost  wholly  in  a  period  somewhat  shorter  than  three 
days. 

These  binary  systems,  so  different  from  any  previously  known, 
would  in  all  likelihood  have  been  hidden  for  ages  to  come  but  for 
photography,  because  until  that  discovery  was  made  there  was  no 
apparent  reason  for  every-day  examination  of  the  spectrum  of 
a  star.  Indeed,  until  then,  when  the  lines  were  once  carefully 
measured,  they  were  put  aside  by  the  observer  as  finished  and 
definite  records  of  the  star's  spectrum.  These  first  results  indicate 
that  the  components  of  Beta  Aurigae  are  separated  by  an  angular 
interval  of  only  9oo7o~oo  Part  °f  a  degree,  a  quantity  so  small  that 
twenty  years  ago  no  one  would  ever  dream  of  being  able  to 
measure  it.2 

New  demands  give  the  eye  new  refinements :  the  dupli- 
city of  the  spectral  lines  of  Beta  Aurigae  was  discovered 
by  Miss  A.  C.  Maury.  Mrs.  W.  P.  Fleming  of  Harvard 
Observatory  has  become  so  expert  in  detecting  variable 
stars  by  their  spectra  that  she   recognises   them   instantly 

1  Henry  Draper  Memorial,  Fourth  Annual  Report,  Cambridge,  Massachu- 
setts,  1S90. 

2  Address  by  Professor  H.  C.  Russell,  government  astronomer,  Sydney, 
to  Section  A, — astronomy,  mathematics,  and  physics, — Australian  Association 
for  the  Advancement  of  Science,  1893. 


338      PHOTOGRAPHY    OF   THE   SKIES 

among  hundreds  of  other  spectra  on  the  same  plate.  And 
mark  the  value  of  these  photographic  spectra  for  subse- 
quent investigation.  Mrs.  Fleming  says :  "While  an  as- 
tronomer with  a  telescope,  be  it  ever  so  powerful,  is  at  the 
mercy  of  the  weather,  the  discussion  of  photographs  goes 
on  uninterruptedly,  and  is  much  more  trustworthy  than 
visual  work,  since,  where  a  question  of  error  arises,  anyone 
interested  in  the  research  can  revise  the  original  observa- 
tion by  another  and  independent  examination  of  the  pho- 
tograph."1 During  the  eight  years  beginning  with  [892, 
four  stars  of  more  than  the  ninth  magnitude  were  added 
to  the  charts  of  astronomy ;  in  every  case  the  discoverer 
was  Mrs.  Fleming  as  she  detected  the  spectrum  of  a  new 
star  in  celestial  photographs. 

Professor  J.  Clerk-Maxwell  was  of  opinion  that  the  rings 
of  Saturn  are  simply  aggregates  of  meteorites  which  pre- 
serve   their    outline    by   swift    rotation. 

The  Rings  of  Saturn        His  belief  haS   been   Verified   by  ProfeSSOr 

are  Meteoric.  James  E.  Keeler  at  the  Allegheny  Ob- 

servatory, his  spectroscope  proving  that 
the  inner  edge  of  each  ring  moves  more  swiftly  than'  the 
outer  edge.  If  the  ring  were  a  solid  body  the  reverse 
would  be  the  fact,  and  the  lines  in  its  spectrum  would  be 
very  nearly  continuations  of  the  lines  in  the  spectrum  of 
the  central  ball.  So  refined  is  this  field  of  inquiry  that  the 
astronomer's  reliance  is  upon  a  micrometer  exquisite  enough 
to  measure  a  space  of  1, ,,',,,„  of  an  inch  on  a  photograph.2 

The  latest  chapter  in  the  story  of  the  solar  spectrum  has 
been  added  by  Professor  George  E.  Hale,  director  of 
the  Yerkes  Observatory.  An  ordinary  spectroscope  has  a 
slit  through  which  a  narrow  ray  of  light  passes  into  a  prism 
for   dispersion.    To  this  slit   Professor  Hale  adds   another 

1   Astronomy  and  Astrophysics,  October,  [893,  )>.  687. 

Ni  ites  "ii  the  Application  <>f  Photography  t"  the  Study  of  Celestial 
Spectra,"  by  James  E.  Keeler,  Photographic  Times,  May,  1 


NEW   SOLAR   REVELATIONS  339 

which  permits  only  light  of  a  single  colour  to  reach  his 
photographic  plate.  Because  this  light  is  of  but  one  hue, 
pictures  can  be  obtained  of  objects  not 
to  be  photographed  in  any  other  way.  The  Spectro-heiiograph. 
Moving  the  apparatus  at  will,  he  secures 
photographs  of  the  prominences  round  the  edge  of  the  sun, 
as  well  as  of  the  whole  surface  of  its  disc.  A  visual  ex- 
amination of  the  prominences  would  require  two  hours,  but 
pictures  of  them  may  be  taken  in  two  minutes.  Many 
faculae,  undiscernible  by  any  other  means,  have  been 
brought  to  view  by  Professor  Hale's  instrument,  which  he 
calls  the  spectro-heiiograph.  The  device  was  suggested 
by  Janssen  as  long  ago  as  1869;  it  was  independently  in- 
vented by  Professor  Hale  in  1889. 

The  extension  of  disclosures   by  the  camera  in  regions 
blank  to  the  eye  seems  without  bound.      Beyond  the  violet 
ray  of  the  solar  spectrum  extend  vibra- 
tions which,  though   invisible,  have  been     Singular  Discoveries. 

caught  on  photographic  plates  ever  since 
the  experiments  of  Scheele  in  1777.  Victorium,  an  ele- 
ment recently  discovered  by  Sir  William  Crookes,  has  a 
spectrum  high  up  in  the  ultra-violet  region,  which,  there- 
fore, can  be  studied  only  photographically.  More  than  one 
element  has  made  its  first  appearance  to  the  chemist  as 
he  has  observed  the  spectrum  of  the  sun.  Helium  thus 
introduced  itself  long  before  its  discovery  in  the  atmo- 
sphere of  the  earth.  Coronium,  which  appears  in  the  solar 
corona,  has  been  diligently  searched  for,  especially  in  the 
tufa  of  volcanoes,  but  thus  far  without  assured  results. 

Toward  the  end  of  the  spectrum,  beyond  the  red,  are 
invisible  radiations  which  evaded  capture  until  1887,  when 
Captain  Abney  secured  an  image  from  them  on  a  bromide- 
of-silver  plate.  He  maintains  that  in  the  use  of  plates 
sensitive  to  such  ultra- visible  rays,  astronomers  have  a  new 
means  of  exploring  the  heavens,  and  are  free  to  enter  upon 


34-0       PHOTOGRAPHY    OF    THE   SKIPS 

a  fresh  chain  of  discoveries.  To  the  stars  already  known  it 
is  in  their  power  to  add  two  classes  as  yet  unseen — stars 
newly  born  or  newly  dead,  whose  temperatures  in  conse- 
quence are  below  the  range  of  visible  incandescence. 

When  light  succeeded  the  pencil  as  a  limner  of  nebula; 
there  was  the  keen  interest  that  attaches  to  the  calling  of 
a  new  witness  in  a  case  before  the  high- 
Nebular  Evolution,  est  court — a  witness  so  much  more  ob- 
servant and  alert  than  any  other,  so 
absolutely  devoid  of  bias  or  prejudice,  that  his  evidence 
decides  the  verdict.  For  a  century  and  more  the  nebular 
hypothesis  of  the  universe,  propounded  by  Kant  and  La- 
place, had  been  vigorously  debated  by  astronomers  and 
physicists.  The  great  telescopes  of  the  two  Herschels  had 
enabled  observers  to  descry  nebuke  having  the  shapes 
which  vast  cloudy  masses  would  assume  in  the  successive 
phases  of  condensation  imagined  in  the  theory.  Some 
were  spherical  in  form,  others  were  disc-like,  yet  others 
were  ring-shaped,  and  the  most  significant  outline  of  all, 
that  of  a  spiral,  was  also  discerned.  But  when  Lord 
Rosse's  great  reflector  was  turned  upon  certain  of  these 
masses  they  were  resolved  into  stars,  and  a  good  many 
critics  said  that,  given  telescopes  sufficiently  powerful,  all 
nebula;  would  in  the  same  manner  prove  to  be  nothing  else 
than  stars.  A  few  years  afterward  the  spectroscope  was 
employed  l>v  the  astronomer,  and  soon  it  discriminated 
between  seeming  nebulae,  which  are  really  star  clusters, 
and  true  nebulae,  which  are  only  the  raw  material  from 
which  stars  ate  condensed.  In  the  evening  ot  August  29, 
1  S^>4,  the  spectroscope,  attached  to  a  telescope,  was  for 
the  first  time  directed  to  a  nebula — the  planetary  nebula  in 
Draco,  l>y  Dr.  (now  Sir)  William  Huggins.  This  is  what 
he  saw : 

The  riddle  of  the  nebula:  was  solved.     The  answer,  which  had 
come  to  us  in  the  light  itself,  read,  Not  an  aggregation  of  stars, 


IK    NEBULA    1\    ORION 

the  ilr.iu  iti  _;  1 1\    Profes     il  <  1     P    B        ,  1 


Plate  XIX. 


THE   NEBULA   IN    ORION. 

Photographed  at  Lick  Observatory,  November  16,  1898. 


EVOLUTION    OF   THE   HEAVENS     341 

but  a  luminous  gas.  Stars  after  the  order  of  our  own  sun,  and  of 
the  brighter  stars,  would  give  a  different  spectrum;  the  light  of 
this  nebula  had  clearly  been  emitted  by  a  luminous  gas.  With  an 
excess  of  caution,  at  the  moment  I  did  not  venture  to  go  further 
than  to  point  out  that  we  had  here  to  do  with  bodies  of  an  order 
quite  different  from  that  of  the  stars.  Further  observations  soon 
convinced  me  that,  though  the  short  span  of  human  life  is  far  too 
minute  relatively  to  cosmical  events  for  us  to  expect  to  see  in  suc- 
cession any  distinct  steps  in  so  august  a  process,  the  probability  is 
indeed  overwhelming  in  favour  of  an  evolution  in  the  past,  and 
still  going  on,  of  the  heavenly  hosts.  A  time  surely  existed  when 
the  matter  now  condensed  into  the  sun  and  planets  filled  the  whole 
space  occupied  by  the  solar  system,  in  the  condition  of  gas,  which 
then  appeared  as  a  glowing  nebula,  after  the  order,  it  may  be,  of 
some  now  existing  in  the  heavens.  There  remained  no  room  for 
doubt  that  the  nebulae,  which  our  telescopes  reveal  to  us,  are  the 
early  stages  of  long  processions  of  cosmical  events,  which  corre- 
spond broadly  to  those  required  by  the  nebular  hypothesis  in  one 
or  other  of  its  forms.1 

The  first  photograph  of  a  nebula,  that  of  Orion,  was 
taken  by  Dr.  Henry  Draper  on  September  30,  1880.  In 
the  following  March  he  took  another  in  a  little  more  than 
two  hours,  which,  for  nearly  every  purpose  of  study,  was 
incomparably  better  than  the  drawing  that  had  occupied 
Professor  Bond  for  every  available  hour  during  four  years 
ending  with  1863.  Better  still  is  the  photograph  secured 
in  but  forty  minutes  with  the  Crossley  Reflector  at  Lick 
Observatory,  November  16,  1898  (Plates  XVIII  and 
XIX).  Dr.  Isaac  Roberts  of  Crowborough,  in  England,  is 
a  successful  photographer  of  nebulae,  and  his  pictures  are 
instructive  in  the  extreme  because  he  compares  them  with 
pictures  of  stellar  systems ;  between  the  two  he  finds  a 
connection  strongly  suggestive  of  derivation. 

To  begin  with,  he  shows  a  number  of  photographs  of  star  re- 
gions in  which  the  stars  can  be  seen  grouped  into  semi-circles, 
segments,  portions  of  ellipses,  and  lines  of  various  degrees  of  curv- 
ature. Some  of  these  groups  are  composed  of  stars  of  nearly 
equal   magnitude ;     some    of    faint    stars,    also    of    nearly    equal 

1  Nineteenth  Century,  June,  1897. 


542      PHOTOGRAPHY    OF   THE   SKIES 

magnitude;  while  the  distances  between  the  stars  are  remark- 
ably regular.  Passing  from  these  characteristics  of  stellar  ar- 
rangement to  photographs  of  spiral  nebulae,  I)r.  Roberts  points 
out  that  the  nebulous  matter  in  the  spirals  is  broken  up  into  star- 
like  loci,  which  in  the  regularity  of  their  distribution  resemble 
the  curves  and  combinations  of  stars  exhibited  by  photographs 
upon  which  no  trace  of  nebulosity  is  visible.  It  seems,  then 
that  the  curvilinear  grouping  of  stars  of  nearly  equal  magnitude 
gives  evidence  that  the  stars  have  been  evolved  from  attenuated 
matter  in  space  by  the  action  of  vortical  motions  and  by  gravita- 
tion. Exactly  how  the  vortical  motions  were  caused,  or  what  has 
brought  about  the  distributions  of  nebulosity  in  the  spiral  nebulae, 
cannot  be  answered;  but  the  marvellous  pictures  of  Dr.  Roberts 
establish  the  reality  of  the  grouping,  and  furnish  students  of  celes- 
tial mechanics  with  rich  food  for  contemplation.1 

As  Professor  bond  drew  the  nebula  of  Andromeda  with  his 
eye  at  the  best  telescope  he  could  command,  he  depicted  dark 
lanes  which  come  out  in  a  photograph  as  divisions  between  zones 
of  nebulous  matter.  What  appeared  to  be  accidental  and  enig- 
matical vacuities  are  shown  to  be  the  consequences  of  cosmogoni- 
cal  action.  The  hypothesis  of  the  formation  of  worlds  from 
nebulas  is  thus  continued,  if  not  demonstrated,  by  the  discovery  of 
this  new  link  to  connect  celestial  species.  'The  spiral  nebula  in 
Canes  Venatici  exhibits  in  a  most  unmistakable  manner  a  "fluid 
haze  of  light,"  eddying  into  worlds,  and  enables  us  to  see  cosmic 
processes  at  work.2 

This  nebula  may  be  instructively  compared  with  the 
ring  nebula  in  Lyra  (Plate  XX). 

Beyond  and  above  any  single  photograph  of  a  nebula, 
the  camera  proves  that  nebulae  are  much  vaster  than  they 
appear  in  the  most  powerful  telescope,  and  this  fact 
strongly  supports  the  hypothesis  of  Kant  and  Laplace  as 
to  the  origin  of  the  universe.  In  two  particulars,  however, 
that  hypothesis  has  been  modified  by  the  advance  <>f  physi- 
cal and  mathematical  research.      It  was  originally    framed 

1    Vature,  Man  h  3,  1898. 

cond  volume  ol   Dr.   Roberts's  Photograph*  .   Star  Clusters,  and 

Nebula  was  published  in  December,  1899,  by  Witherby  &  <'"..  326  IIil;1i 
Holborn,  London.  Ii  contains  seventy-two  photographs  printed  in  collotype 
from  the  original  negatives,  with  descriptive  and  explanatory  letterpn 

-  Nature,  Man  li  i",   1 


GREAT   SPIRAL   NEBULA   IN    CANES   VENATICI. 

(Enlarged  3  diameters.) 

TakenJn  3  hours  with  8-inch  refractor.     Goodsell  Observatory,  Northfield,  Minnesota. 


Plate  XX. 

RING   NEBULA    IN    LYRA. 

(Enlarged  5  diameters.) 

Taken  in  2  hours  with  8-inch  refractor.     Goodsell  Observatory,  Northfield,  Minnesota. 


NATURES    HISTORY    LEGIBLE       343 

long  before  the  relations  of  heat  to  its  sister  forces  were 
understood.  It  is  not  now  deemed  necessary  to  suppose 
that  the  primal  temperature  of  the  universe  was  high ;  the 
collision  of  its  particles,  as  attracted  together  by  gravita- 
tion, is  a  quite  sufficient  explanation  of  the  heat  which  a 
star  may  exhibit  when  first  condensed.  Nor  is  it  necessary 
to  suppose  that  the  original  condition  of  cosmical  matter 
was  that  of  a  gas  ;  it  may  have  been  that  of  fine  dust,  or 
even  an  aggregation  of  meteorites,  such  as  those  which 
still  rotate  around  the  central  ball  of  Saturn.  Professor 
George  H.  Darwin  says  that  a  meteoric  swarm,  seen  from 
the  distance  of  the  stars,  would  behave  like  a  mass  com- 
posed of  continuous  gas. 

The  triumphs  of  light  in  the  astronomical  camera  but 
re-affirm  the  solidarity  of  nature,  testifying  once  more 
that  any  new  thread  caught  from  her  skein  leads  the  ex- 
plorer not  only  through  labyrinths  which  puzzled  him  of 
old,  but  to  new  heavens  otherwise  hidden  for  all  time. 
Nothing  within  human  knowledge  is  more  marvellous  than 
the  agency,  apparently  so  simple,  concerned  in  all  this.  A 
ray  of  light,  infinitesimal  in  energy,  persists  on  its  way,  for 
years  it  may  be,  through  the  whole  radius  of  the  universe, 
untired,  untolled  ;  its  undulations,  intricate  beyond  full  por- 
trayal, arrive  with  an  unconfused  story  of  the  physical 
consistence  and  chemical  nature  of  their  source,  of  the 
atmosphere  that  waylaid  them,  of  the  direction  in  which, 
and  at  the  rate  at  which,  their  parent  orb  was  spinning  or 
flying  when  the  ray  set  out  for  the  earth. 

To  men  of  old  who  knew  only  what  had  befallen  them- 
selves and  their  dwelling-place  during  a  few  generations, 
it  was  but  natural  to  repeat :  "  The  thing  that  hath  been, 
it  is  that  which  shall  be  :  and  that  which  is  done  is  that 
which  shall  be  done :  and  there  is  no  new  thing  under  the 
sun."1     But  we  of   to-day   are  in  a    different   case.      The 

1  Ecclesiastes  i,  9. 


^44      PHOTOGRAPHY    OF   THE   SKIES 

astronomer  joining  camera  to  telescope  brings  to  proof  in 
unexpected  fashion  that  the  first  act  in  the  cosmical  drama, 
like  the  last,  conforms  to  the  law  of  derivation,  that  the 
universe  exhibits  in  its  totality  the  same  rule  of  descent 
with  modification  which  the  naturalist  observes  in  the  moth, 
or  the  botanist  in  the  field  of  wheat.  The  latest  nebular 
photographs  display  a  continuous  series  of  gradations  from 
the  most  attenuated  wisps  of  matter  to  stellar  spheres  which 
bear  evidence  of  having  been  newly  ushered  into  life.  "  In 
a  forest,"  said  a  great  astronomer,  Sir  William  Herschel, 
"  we  see  around  us  trees  in  every  stage  of  their  life-history. 
There  are  the  seedlings  just  bursting  from  the  acorn,  the 
sturdy  oaks  in  their  full  vigour,  those  also  that  are  old  and 
near  decay,  and  the  prostrate  trunks  of  the  dead."  Much 
the  same  succession  in  the  stages  of  cosmic  life  are  dis- 
closed by  the  camera,  and  Evolution  stands  forth  con- 
firmed as  true  not  only  of  every  branch  of  the  tree  of  life, 
but  of  nature  as  the  sum  of  all  things. 

Nearly  three  hundred  years  ago  George  Herbert  could 

say : 

Nothing  hath  gol  so  far 
But  man  hath  caught  and  kept  it  as  his  prey. 
His  eves  dismount  the  highest  star, 
He  is  in  little  all  the  sphere. 
Herbs  gladly  cure  our  flesh,  because  that  they 
Find  their  acquaintance  there. 

At  the  close  of  the  nineteenth  century  his  insight  receives 
confirmation  on  every  hand.  We  learn  with  wonder  that 
the  scope  of  life  on  land  and  sea,  the  architecture  of  the 
forest,  the  ocean  and  the  plain,  with  all  their  myriad  ten- 
antry, are  what  they  are  because  the  atoms  which  built 
them  were  present,  and  in  such  and  such  proportions,  in  the 
birth-cloud  of  the  world.  If  a  rose  has  tints  of  incompara- 
ble beauty,  they  are  conferred  by  elements  thence  derived, 
whose  kin,  allame  in  an  orb  a  celestial  diameter  away,  send 
forth   the  beam   needful   to   reveal   that   beauty.      Were  the 


INQUIRY    NEVER    FRUITLESS         345 

sun  less  rich  in  variety  of  fuel  than  it  is,  the  earth,  despite 
its  own  diversity  of  substance,  would  be  vastly  less  a  feast 
for  the  eye  than  that  newly  spread  before  us  at  every  dawn. 
When  we  remember  how  disinterested  was  the  quest 
which  has  led  to  so  great  and  unexpected  knowledge,  we 
begin  to  see  that  the  philosopher  is  often,  and  unwittingly, 
the  chiefest  prospector  and  the  best.  It  is  doubtful 
whether  any  path  of  discovery  whatever,  no  matter  how 
unrelated  to  utility  it  may  seem,  can  be  pursued  without 
leading  to  gain  at  last.  No  study  would  at  the  first  glance 
appear  to  be  more  remote  from  influence  upon  human 
thought  and  feeling  than  the  portrayal  of  heavenly  bodies 
too  distant  for  telescopic  view.  Yet  that  portrayal  has 
served  to  enlarge  our  conceptions  of  the  varied  forms  which 
worlds  and  suns  may  display;  the  shimmer  of  the  nebulae 
enters  the  camera  to  corroborate  the  story  of  the  rock,  the 
plant,  and  the  animal,  as  each  tells  us  how  it  came  to  be. 
Adding  to  vision  the  eye  of  artifice,  we  are  confirmed  in  the 
faith  that  nature  is  intelligible  to  her  inmost  heart,  as  naught 
else  than  the  expression  of  reason,  which,  infinite  itself,  has 
implanted  in  the  mind  of  man  an  undying  desire  to  under- 
stand of  the  infinite  all  it  may. 


CHAPTER   XXIV 

PHOTOGRAPHY    AND    ELECTRICITY    AS    ALLIES 

ELECTRICITY,  as  we  have  seen,  has  been  a  most  pro- 
lific parent    in    the   field  of  art;    scarcely  less   fertile 
have  been  the  applications  of  the  camera.     Each  of  them  in 

reaching   out    for   alliances    has   entered 
The  Bolometer.        the  province  of  the  other,  with  the  result 

that  the  world's  progress  in  both  science 
and  art  has  received  a  powerful  impetus  from  instruments 
at  once  electrical  and  photographic.  Let  us  first  of  all 
note  their  exploration  of  those  breadths  of  the  spectrum 
so  long  unsuspected  by  the  investigator,  and  now  steadily 
extending  to  many  times  the  area  directly  visible  to  the 
eye.  A  layman  would  suppose  that  the  endeavours  of 
physicists  to  lengthen  out  the  visible  spectrum  would 
cease  with  the  very  considerable  additions  due  to  the  direct 
photography  of  rays  ultra-violet  and  ultra-red.  But  the 
lay  mind  knows  little  of  the  persistence  and  address  of  the 
accomplished  physicist,  and  can  only  marvel  at  the  mode 
in  which  he  summons  fresh  resources  from  points  of  the 
compass  at  first  seeming  the  farthest  removed  from  his 
task. 

In  Chapter  VIII  it  was  said  tli.it  extremely  minute  vari- 
ations of  temperature  are  detected  by  a  galvanometer 
attached  to  a  thermopile.  Professor  S.  P.  Langley,  sec- 
retary of  the  Smithsonian   Institution  at  Washington,   has 

34& 


THE    WONDERFUL    BOLOMETER     347 

refined  this  instrument  into  an  appliance  which  he  styles 
the  bolometer.  Its  delicate  wire,  much  thinner  than  a 
human  hair,  through  which  an  electric  current  constantly 
passes,  and  sensitive  to  much  less  than  the  ten-millionth  of 
a  degree  Centigrade,  is  moved  by  minute  steps  through 
the  invisible  areas  of  the  solar  spectrum ;  each  indication 
of  temperature,  automatically  photographed,  comes  out  as 
a  line  which  varies  in  depth  of  tone  with  the  intensity  of 
the  thermal  ray.  When  the  device  has  finished  its  journey 
the  larger  part  of  the  whole  breadth  of  solar  radiation  rises 
to  view — in  all  fifteen  times  as  extensive  as  the  spectrum 
which  Newton  saw.  Plate  XXI  represents  the  infra-red 
spectrum   of  a   rock-salt   prism,  in  its  wave-lengths  0.75  (jl 

tO    2.29    [i.j 

The  bolometer,  employed  with  each  chemical  element, 
promises  that  one  day  the  physicist  shall  have  before  him 
a  full,  or  at  least  a  tolerably  complete,  map  of  every  dis- 
tinctive spectrum.  He  can  then  ask,  Given  such  and  such 
vibrations,  how  is  the  body  constituted  that  sent  them 
forth? — much  as  a  musician  might  try  to  reason  from  the 
tone  and  timbre  of  a  note  to  the  structure  of  the  instru- 
ment that  uttered  the  note.  A  vibrating  square  of  metal 
has  a  different  sound  from  a  vibrating  triangle,  and  so  on 
with  every  other  resonant  mass  of  simple  outline.  Having 
ascertained  the  distinctive  note  of  each,  it  would  be  easy 
from  a  given  sound  to  say  that  a  square,  a  triangle,  a 
circle,  or  other  simple  form  is  in  vibration.  In  effect,  there- 
fore, as  an  atom  is  busy  spreading  its  spectrum  before  the 
investigator  it  is  doing  nothing  else  than  painting  its  own 
portrait,  with  no  small  promise  to  the  chemist,  who  takes 
compounds  apart  that  he  may  learn  their  inner  architecture, 
their  intricate  ties. 

1  Professor  Langley  describes  the  work  of  the  bolometer  in  detail  in  his 
paper  on  "  The  Astrophysical  Observatory,"  included  in  The  Smithsonian  In- 
stitution, 1846-gb—the  History  oj  its  First  Half-century,  Washington,  1897. 


348    THE   CAMERA   AND   ELECTRICITY 

Fresh  proofs  await  us  of  the  supreme  rank  of  both  elec- 
tricity and  photography  as   resources  of  art  and  science-  as 

we    observe    the     transcendent     powers 

Rontgen  Rays  and  their  evoked  by  their  union.    From  this  union 

Kindred.  no    jssue    \s    more    extraordinary,    more 

weighty  with  meaning  and  promise,  than 
the  X-ray  pictures  due  to  Professor  Wilhelm  Konrad  Ront- 
gen. In  these  pictures  he  has  but  crowned  labours  which  be- 
gan when  Sir  John  Herschel  noticed  that  a  peculiar  blue  light 
was  diffused  from  a  perfectly  colourless  solution  of  quinine 
sulphate.  Professor  (now  Sir)  George  Stokes  explained  the 
phenomenon  by  showing  that  this  blue  light  consists  of  vi- 
brations originally  too  rapid  to  be  visible,  which  are  slowed 
down  within  the  limits  of  perceptibility  as  they  pass  through 
the  liquid.  A  sheet  of  paper  moistened  with  a  solution 
of  quinine  sulphate  lends  itself  to  a  simple  and  striking  ex- 
periment :  let  a  spectrum  be  directed  upon  it,  and  the  rays 
beyond  the  violet,  originally  invisible,  shine  forth  with  a 
bluish-green  light. 

Other  substances  were  early  observed  to  possess  this 
quality,  among  them  Devonshire  fluor-spar,  whence  the 
property  is  called  "  fluorescence."  Glass  stained  with  ura- 
nium exhibits  it  in  a  remarkable  degree,  but  in  this  category 
a  rank  even  higher  is  held  by  platino-cyanide  of  barium. 
Fluorescence  lasts  only  during  stimulation  by  an  impinging 
beam  of  light ;  cut  that  off  and  at  once  the  shining  ceases — 
just  as  in  the  case  of  an  extinguished  candle.  There  is  a 
similar  kind  of  glow  which  continues  long  after  an  exciting 
beam  of  light  has  been  withdrawn,  when  the  phenomena 
merge  into  phosphorescence — first  studied  by  M.  Alexandre 
Edmond  Becquerel  of  Paris.  If,  to  take  a  common  case,  a 
lump  of  calcium  sulphide  is  exposed  to  the  sun  for  a  few 
minutes,  and  carried  into  a  dark  room,  it  maintains  its  glow 
for  another  minute  or  longer.  This  compound,  when 
joined  to  a  trace  of  bismuth    ami   other    ingredients,  forms 


RONTGEN'S    PRECURSORS  349 

Balmain's  luminous  paint,  which  has  remarkable  phospho- 
rescent power.  Exposed  to  sunshine  and  kept  in  total 
darkness  for  six  weeks,  it  has,  nevertheless,  been  able  to 
fog  a  photographic  film.  Specimens  of  lime,  after  ex- 
posure to  the  spark  of  a  Leyden  jar,  have  been  found  to 
give  out  light  when  heated  after  having  been  four  years  in 
the  dark.  Phosphorescence  and  fluorescence  are  now  found 
to  be  of  the  same  family  as  the  X  ray  and  many  other 
radiations  known  to  us  only  indirectly.  The  single  name 
"  luminescence  "  is  bestowed  upon  the  whole  group.  What 
gives  them  peculiar  interest  is  that  all  are  excitable  in  ex- 
treme degrees  by  electricity  of  high  tension. 

One  path  of  approach  to  the  achievement  of  Profes- 
sor Rontgen  was  opened  by  Sir  John  Herschel ;  another, 
as  important,  was  blazed  and  broadened  by  Professor  (now 
Sir)  William  Crookes.  In  1874  and  1875  he  was  engaged 
upon  the  researches  which  gave  the  world  the  radiometer, 
the  tiny  mill  whose  vanes  rotate  with  rays  of  light  or  heat. 
The  action  of  this  mill  depends  upon  its  being  placed  in  a 
glass  bulb  almost  vacuous.  When  such  a  bulb  incloses 
rubies,  bits  of  phenakite,  or  other  suitable  objects,  and 
electrical  discharges  are  directed  upon  them,  they  glow 
with  the  most  brilliant  luminescence  known  to  art.  Ex- 
cited by  a  cathode  ray,  that  is,  a  ray  from  the  negative  pole 
of  an  electrical  machine,  a  Crookes  bulb  itself  shines  with 
a  vivid  golden  green  ray  which  reminds  the  onlooker  of 
the  fluorescence  of  earlier  experiments.  What  a  Crookes 
bulb  is  we  shall  see  in  the  course  of  this  chapter. 

Year  by  year  the  list  of  substances  excitable  to  lumin- 
osity in  a  Crookes  bulb  has  been  lengthened,  and  in  1894 
it  was  the  good  fortune  of  Professor  Philipp  Lenard  to 
discover  a  wonderful  power  of  such  a  bulb.  Emerging 
from  it  was  a  cathode  ray  which  passed  nearly  as  freely 
through  a  thin  plate  of  aluminium  as  common  sunshine  does 
through  a  pane  of  glass  (Fig.  89).      Hertz  had,  a  few  years 


350    THE  CAMERA   AND  ELECTRICITY 

previously,  discovered  that  metals  in  very  thin  sheets  were 
virtually  transparent  (or,  to  use  Mr.  Hyndman's  term, 
transradiable)  to  his  electric  waves.  This  property  was 
found  by  Professor  Lenard  to  extend  to  the    cathode    ray 


Lenard  tube.      W,  aluminium  window. 

and  in  a  much  higher  degree.     Gold-  and  silver-foil  let  the 
rays  pass  through  with  almost  undiminished  intensity. 

Especially  brilliant  are  the  fluorescent  and  phosphorescent 
effects  excited  by  these  rays;  the  platino-cyanides,  the 
phosphides  of  the  alkaline  earths,  calc-spar  and  uranium 
glass,  are  among  the  substances  which  glow  brightest  under 
their  stimulus.  They  act  with  energy  upon  a  photographic 
plate,  over  which  is  laid  a  sheet  of  cardboard  one-eighth  of 
an  inch  in  thickness — this  with  an  exposure  of  two  minutes. 
The  ultra-violet  ray  of  ordinary  light  has  the  singular 
power  of  causing  the  gases  which  it  may  traverse  to  be- 
come conductors  of  electricity,  with  the  effect  of  discharging 
an  electrified  metallic  plate  ;  this  property  is  shared  by  cath- 
ode rays.  Associated  with  them  are  the  rays  of  still  more 
extraordinary  powers,  discovered  by  Professoi  Rontgen. 
In  his  own  words  let  his  achievement  be  recounted,  as  pub- 
lished in  McC/ure's  Magazine,  April,  1896. 

"  I  have  been  for  a  long  time  interested  in  the  problem  <>f  the 
cathode  rays  from  a  vacuum  tube  as  studied  by  Hertz  and  Le- 
nard. 1  had  followed  their  and  other  n-cin  ho  with  meat  in- 
terest,  and  determined,  as  soon  as  1  had  the  time,  to  make  some 
researches  of  my  own.  This  time  I  found  at  the  close  of  last 
October.  I  had  been  at  work  lor  some  days  when  I  discovered 
something  new." 


RONTGEN'S    STORY  351 

"What  was  the  date?" 

"The  8th  of  November." 

"And  what  was  the  discovery?  " 

"  I  was  working  with  a  Crookes  tube  covered  by  a  shield  of 
black  cardboard.  A. piece  of  barium  platino-cyanide  paper  lay 
on  the  bench  there.  I  had  been  passing  a  current  through  the 
tube,  and  I  noticed  a  peculiar  black  line  across  the  paper." 

"  What  of  that?" 

"  The  effect  was  one  which  could  only  be  produced,  in  ordi- 
nary parlance,  by  the  passage  of  light.  No  light  could  come  from 
the  tube,  because  the  shield  which  covered  it  was  impervious  to 
any  light  known,  even  that  of  the  electric  arc." 

"  And  what  did  you  think?  " 

"  I  did  not  think ;  I  investigated.  I  assumed  that  the  effect 
must  have  come  from  the  tube,  since  its  character  indicated  that 
it  could  come  from  nowhere  else.  I  tested  it.  In  a  few  minutes 
there  was  no  doubt  about  it.  Rays  were  coming  from  the  tube 
which  had  a  luminescent  effect  upon  the  paper.  I  tried  it  success- 
fully at  greater  and  greater  distances,  even  at  two  metres.  It 
seemed  at  first  a  new  kind  of  invisible  light.  It  was  clearly  some- 
thing new,  something  unrecorded." 

"  Is  it  light?  " 

"  No." 

"  Is  it  electricity?  " 

"  Not  in  any  known  form." 

"What  is  it?" 

"  I  don't  know." 

And  the  discoverer  of  the  X  rays  thus  stated  as  calmly  his 
ignorance  of  their  essence  as  has  everybody  else  who  has  written 
on  the  phenomena  thus  far. 

"  Having  discovered  the  existence  of  a  new  kind  of  rays,  I  of 
course  began  to  investigate  what  they  would  do."  He  took  up 
a  series  of  cabinet-sized  photographs.  "  It  soon  appeared  from 
tests  that  the  rays  had  penetrative  power  to  a  degree  hitherto  un- 
known. They  penetrated  paper,  wood,  and  cloth  with  ease ;  and 
the  thickness  of  the  substance  made  no  perceptible  difference, 
within  reasonable  limits."  He  showed  photographs  of  a  box  of 
laboratory  weights  of  platinum,  aluminium,  and  brass,  they  and  the 
brass  hinges  all  having  been  photographed  from  a  closed  box, 
without  any  indication  of  the  box.  Also  a  photograph  of  a  coil 
of  fine  wire,  wound  on  a  wooden  spool,  the  wire  having  been 
photographed  and  the  wood  omitted. 

"  The  rays,"  he  continued,  "  passed  through  all  the  metals 
tested,  with  a  facility  varying,  roughly  speaking,  with  the  density 
of  the  metal.  These  phenomena  I  have  discussed  carefullv  in 
my  report  to  the  Wiirzburg  Society,  and  you  will  find  all  the  tech- 


352    THE  CAMERA  AND   ELECTRICITY 

nical  results  therein  stated."  He  showed  a  photograph  of  a  small 
sheet  of  zinc.  This  was  composed  of  smaller  plates  soldered 
laterally  with  solders  of  different  metallic  proportions.  The  differ- 
ing lines  of  shadow  caused  by  the  difference  in  the  solders  were 
visible  evidence  that  a  new  means  of  detecting  flaws  and  chemi- 
cal variations  in  metals  had  been  found.  A  photograph  of  a 
compass  showed  the  needle  and  dial  taken  through  the  closed 
brass  cover.  The  markings  of  the  dial  were  in  red  metallic  paint, 
and  thus  interfered  with  the  rays,  and  were  reproduced.  "  Sin<  e 
the  rays  had  this  great  penetrative  power,  it  seemed  natural  that 
they  should  penetrate  flesh,  and  so  it  proved  in  photographing 
the  hand,  as  I  showed  you." 

For  twenty  years  before  their  detection  the  X  rays  had 
been  created  in  experiments  with  the  Crookes  bulbs. 
Rbntgen's  great  discovery  was  no  accident.  He  was 
at  the  time  studying  the  phenomena  of  luminescence, 
as  well  as  those  of  electricity  pure  and  simple;  this 
accounts  for  his  having  at  hand  the  telltale  screen 
of    barium    platino-cyanide,    which    showed    the    peculiar 


Fig.  90. 
Crooks  tube  photographing  the  bones  of  a  hand. 


black  streak,  excitable  only  by  rays  of  known  or 
unknown  species.  Without  the  trained  intelligence  to 
observe  an  unusual  phenomenon  so  slight  in  degree,  and 
follow  it  up  patiently  to  its  cause,  the  X  rays  would  have 
fallen  as  vainly  across  his  laboratory  that  memorable  No- 
vember morning  as  they  had  often  before  traversed  the 
work-rooms  of  other  investigators.      As  we  glanced  at  the 


NEW    SURGICAL    RESOURCES  353 

astronomical  conquests  of  the  camera,  we  saw  that  they 
declare  the  firmament  to  be  not  only  much  vaster  but  also 
more  diversified  in  its  tenantry  than  was  supposed  a  gen- 
eration ago.  So,  too,  with  the  realm  of  nature  near  at 
hand.  The  ultra-violet  ray  is  found  to  have  properties 
more  searching  than  those  of  common  light ;  the  cathode 
ray  is  discovered  to  be  more  penetrating  still ;  and  partnered 
with  it  is  a  distinct  emission  which  casts  shadows  of  bone 
through  solid  flesh,  of  gold  or  lead  through  a  wooden 
coffer.  It  is  this  outdoing  of  the  beam  studied  by  Le- 
nard  that  so  quickly  gave  the  X  ray  its  world-wide  fame 
(Fig.  90). 

The  photographer,  like  the  draughtsman,  had  long 
been  content  to  delineate  surfaces  solely.  It  is  only  the 
rare  talent  of  an  Alma-Tadema  that  can  simulate  translu- 
cency  with  the  brush,  and  cozen  the  eye  into  believing  that 
it  peers  below  the  glinting  of  a  marble  fountain  or  a  wall. 
Provided  with  a  Rontgen  bulb,  the  photographer  passes 
from  the  exterior  to  the  interior  of  an  object,  almost  as  if 
he  were  a  sorcerer  with  power  to  transmute  all  things  to 
glass.  Equipped  with  a  simple  X-ray  apparatus,  disloca- 
tions and  fractures  are  detected  by  the  surgeon,  diseases 
of  bones  are  studied,  and  shot,  needles,  and  bits  of  glass 
or  corroding  wire  within  the  muscles  of  a  patient  are  lo- 
cated with  exactitude.  Thanks  to  the  work  of  Mr.  Mac- 
kenzie Davidson,  the  like  detection  of  renal  calculi  can  be 
looked  forward  to  with  a  fair  degree  of  certainty.  The 
same  means  of  exploration  offers  equal  aid  to  medicine: 
it  demonstrates  the  calcification  of  arteries,  and  aneurisms 
of  the  heart  or  of  the  first  part  of  the  aorta ;  with  improved 
methods  it  may  be  possible  to  study  fatty  degenerations  of 
the  arteries  and  larger  blood-vessels.  Dr.  C.  M.  Mouillin, 
addressing  the  Rontgen  Society  of  London  as  its  presi- 
dent, states  that  the  fluorescent  screen  has  now  reached 
such  a  degree  of  perfection  that  the  minutest  movement  of 


354    THE  CAMERA  AND  ELECTRICITY 

the  heart  and  lungs,  and  the  least  change  in  the  action  of 
the  diaphragm,  can  be  watched  and  studied  at  leisure  in  the 
living  subject.  He  considers  it  probable  that  the  exami- 
nation of  a  patient's  chest  with  this  screen  may  become  as 
much  a  matter  of  common  routine  as  with  the  stethoscope 
to-day.  A  forecast  more  recent  still  points  to  the  possi- 
bility of  committing  X-ray  impressions  to  kinetographic 
films,  this  with  intent  to  further  the  resources  of  medical 
instruction. 

Scanned  by  this  new  detecter,  the  dead  as  well  as  the 
living  tell  their  secrets.  In  the  Museum  of  Natural  His- 
tory at  Vienna  there  is  an  Egyptian  mummy  which  is  hu- 
man in  form,  but  which  from  its  inscriptions  was  taken  to 
be  that  of  an  ibis.  It  is,  however,  so  rare  and  valuable  an 
object  that  it  was  not  thought  advisable  to  quiet  doubts 
by  removing  its  wrappings  —  with  the  inevitable  risk  of 
damage.  On  being  subjected  to  the  X  rays  the  mummy 
disclosed  the  unquestionable  outlines  of  a  large  ibis-like 
skeleton. 

An  extension  of  the  utility  of  X  rays  would  seem  to  lie 
in  employing  extreme  electrical  pressures  and  the  closest 
possible  approach  to  a  perfect  vacuum  in  the  bulb.  Pro- 
fessor John  Trowbridge  has  found  that  with  3,000,000 
volts  a  single  discharge  through  highly  rarefied  media  pro- 
duces X  rays  powerful  enough  to  photograph  the  bones  of 
the  hand  in  one-millionth  of  a  second.  In  the  operative 
surgery  and  medicine  of  the  nineteenth  century  the  X  rays 
take  a  place  of  honour  side  by  side  with  anaesthesia  and  the 
antiseptic  treatment  due  to  Pasteur  and  Lister.  In  the 
study  of  the  phenomena  of  growth 'these  rays  are  inform- 
ing in  a  new  way.  Pigs  and  other  domestic  animals  have 
been  photographed  day  by  day  from  birth,  clearly  showing 
the  result  of  various  courses  of  feeding  on  the  formation  pi 
flesh  and  bone.  In  a  totally  distinct  field  of  inquiry,  X  rays 
are  employed  to  detect  slate  and  other  admixtures  in  coal. 


OPACITY  NON-EXISTENT  355 

Slate  is  comparatively  opaque  and  coal  transparent  to  these 
impulses. 

Professor  Rontgen's  success  has  spun  a  thread  which 
unites  many  researches  in  contiguous  fields.  In  1896  M. 
Henri  Becquerel  and  Professor  Silvanus 

P.    Thompson    independently    found    that       Other  Luminescence. 

certain  salts  of  uranium — for  example, 
the  nitrate  of  uranyl  and  the  fluoride  of  uranium  and  am- 
monium— emit  invisible  radiations  which  easily  pass  through 
aluminium  and  produce  on  a  photographic  plate  images  of 
interposed  objects  comparatively  opaque.  This  effect,  says 
Professor  Thompson,  "  appears  to  be  due  to  an  invisible 
phosphorescence  of  a  persistent  sort."  Some  time  after- 
ward M.  Becquerel  observed  that  uranium  by  itself  far 
surpasses  any  of  its  compounds  in  this  weird  property, 
emitting  rays  continuously  and  with  apparently  undimin- 
ished intensity  for  more  than  a  year. 

In  1898  and  1 899  M.  and  Mme.  Curie  announced 
their  discovery  in  pitch-blende  of  two  new  substances, 
radium  and  polonium,  both  having  much  greater  radio- 
activity than  uranium.  Dr.  W.  J.  Russell,  of  the  Davy- 
Faraday  Laboratory, London,  has  greatly  extended  the  study 
of  rays  not  directly  visible.  He  has  observed  photographic 
effects  from  bright  zinc,  from  wood,  charcoal,  and  paper ;  all 
of  which  seem  to  be  due  to  the  formation  of  peroxide  of 
hydrogen  during  the  photographic  process.  So  active  is 
this  peroxide  that  one  part  diluted  with  a  million  parts  of 
water  is  capable  of  giving  a  picture.  With  rays  emitted 
by  sugar,  after  they  had  pierced  a  block  of  wood  two  and 
a  half  inches  thick,  Mr.  A.  F.  McKissick  has  photographed 
coins,  keys,  and  pieces  of  glass.  So  far  as  known  at  present, 
there  are  neither  Rontgen  nor  Becquerel  rays  in  sunlight, 
but  M.  Gustave  le  Bon  has  shown  that  the  solar  beam  has 
a  power  of  permeation  somewhat  allied  to  the  Rontgen 
and  Becquerel  phenomena.      He  finds  that  if  sunshine  falls 


^()    THE  CAMERA   AND    ELECTRICITY 

upon  a  thin  sheet  of  iron  covering  a  negative  and  a  sensi- 
tive plate,  the  plate  gives  a  normal  though  weak  positive 
on  development.1 

Manifestly,  the  unseen  universe  which  enfolds  -us  is 
steadily  being  brought  to  the  light  of  day.  The  investi- 
gations of  Hertz  established  that  the 
The  Unseen  Universe,  light-waves  which  affect  the  eye  are  but 
one  octave  in  a  gamut  which  sweeps  in- 
definitely far  both  above  and  below  them.  In  his  hands, 
as  in  those  of  Joseph  Henry  long  before,  electric  waxes 
found  their  way  through  the  walls  and  floors  of  a  house; 
in  the  Marconi  telegraph  these  waves  pass  through  the 
earth  or  a  fog,  a  mist  or  a  rain-storm,  with  little  or  no  hin- 
drance. What  does  all  this  mean?  Nothing  less  than  that, 
given  its  accordant  ray,  any  substance  whatever  is  perme- 
able, and  that,  therefore,  to  communicate  between  any  two 
places  in  the  universe  is  simply  a  question  of  providing  the 
right  means.  And  limited  in  range  though  the  visual 
faculty  of  man  may  be,  he  is  fast  ascertaining  how  to  treat 
an  invisible  ray  so  as  to  bring  its  image  to  view.  If  the 
wave  in  its  original  path  eludes  his  eye,  it  cannot  strike 
his  photographic  plate  without  leaving  its  impress  —  to  be 
examined  at  leisure.  In  photographic  chemistry  enough 
has  been  done  to  make  it  entirely  probable  that  no  ray 
undulates  through  space  that  is  not  matched  by  some  com- 
pound or  other  which  it  has  power  to  shake  apart.  Small 
and  feeble  though  the  hand  of  man  may  be,  it  yet  holds 
clues  to  every  maze  in  the  universe — clues  through  which 
the  unseen  may  be  perceived,  the  silent  given  a  voice,  the 
impalpable  rise  to  touch.  The  day  seems  at  hand  when 
every  undulation  of  heat  and  sound,  with  all  the  waves  in- 

1  Minli  interesting  detail  i--  recorded  in  Light,  Visible  and  Invisible.,  l>y 
Silvanus  I'.  Thompson,  London  ami  New  York,  Macmillan,  1897;  in  Radia- 
tion, by  II.  II.  F.  rlyndman,  London,  Sonnenschein,  and  New  Vt>rk.  Mac- 
millan, [898;  also  in  appendices  t<>  Signalling  Hit/tout  Wins,  by  Oliver  J. 
Lodge,  third  edition,  London,   The  Electrician  Co.,  1900. 


GOOD    IN    EVERYTHING  357 

termediate  and  beyond,  will  depict  themselves  for  studious 
investigation. 

And   let  it  not  be  forgotten  that  these  revelations  took 
their .  rise   in   what    was   at    first  resented  as  an  intrusion. 
When  the  ultra-violet  ray  impressed  it- 
self upon  the  earliest  photographic  plates      The  intruder  is  a 
it  so  seriously  deranged  the  translation  of  Friend, 

colour  that,  if  possible,  the  photographer 
would  have  banished  it  at  once  and  forever.  Yet  that  in- 
truding ray  has  proved  to  be  a  friend,  not  only  generous  in 
gifts  of  its  own,  but  pointing  to  other  and  greater  wealth 
fast  being  won  from  darkness  to  light.  When  the  solar 
spectrum  is  thrown  upon  a  sensitive  plate  it  is  in  the  violet 
and  ultra-violet  region  that  the  principal  change  occurs.  It 
is  in  asking,  What  more  ?  that  so  much  has  been  rescued 
from  the  Unknown,  not  only  within  the  play  of  the  spec- 
trum of  the  sun,  but  also  in  spheres  of  radiation  that  seem 
to  have  little  or  nothing  in  common  with  the  solar  beam. 

Again  recurs  the  truth  that  no  property  of  matter  exists, 
though  at  first  it  may  seem  merely  strange  and  useless,  but 
holds  the  richest  meaning  for  the  explorer.  For  a  good  many 
years  the  examination  of  fluorescent  substances  might  have 
seemed  futile  enough.  What  is  the  good,  the  practical 
man  might  have  asked,  of  showing  me  the  bluish  light  into 
which  you  convert  rays  otherwise  unseen?  Professor 
Rontgen  has  answered  that  question,  and  the  vast  field  of 
research  in  which  he  is  the  most  conspicuous  figure  may 
bear  harvests  quite  as  rich  as  his  in  the  early  years  of  the 
twentieth  century.  We  have  learned  that  light  may  be 
freely  radiated  without  the  company  of  heat — as  in  the 
familiar  gleam  of  the  glow-worm  and  the  firefly.  Is  it  too 
much  to  expect  that  art  will  pursue  nature  to  yet  another 
fastness,  and  so  economically  create  light  in  her  own 
method  that  the  gross  waste  of  the  electric  lamps  of  to-day 
may  soon  cease  to  reproach  the  physicist? 


358    THE  CAMERA   AND   ELECTRICITY 

But  let  us  descend  from  these  high  anticipations  to 
unions  of  electric  and  photographic  art  already  accom- 
plished and  highly  fruitful.  In  places 
union  of  the  camera  inaccessible  to  daylight,  and  anywhere 
and  the  Electric  Lamp.  at  night,  the  electric  beam,  instead  of 
the  sun,  is  at  the  camera's  service.  In 
1890  a  landslide  took  place  at  Chancelade,  in  France, 
overwhelming  a  quarry  in  which  labourers  were  at  work. 
Fortunately  a  chink  remained  in  the  rock  and  rubbish, 
which,  small  as  it  was,  admitted  a  camera  with  its  electric 
lamp  and  wire.  Informed  by  its  pictures,  the  imprisoned 
men  were  traced  and  speedily  rescued.  To  pass  from  help 
in  accident  to  aid  in  disease:  Dr.  Edward  O.  Schaaf  of 
Newark,  New  Jersey,  in  1897,  devised  a  camera  and  lamp 
by  which  he  has  repeatedly  photographed  small  areas  of 
the  mucous  membrane  of  the  stomach,  a  branch  of  diag- 
nosis in  which  progress  is  also  reported  from  Germany. 

The  independence  of  air  enjoyed  by  the  electric  light 
bestows  upon  the  sensitive  plate  the  freedom  of  the  ocean 
depths,  or  admits  it  to  mines  vitiated  by  fire-damp  beyond 
the  endurance  of  human  lungs.  In  surveying  the  river 
beds  from  which  the  piers  of  bridges  are  to  rise,  and  the 
surf-swept  beaches  on  which  telegraph  cables  are  to  be  laid, 
the  electric  lamp  and  its  twin,  the  camera,  are  becoming 
indispensable  to  the  engineer.  The  perfect  mechanical  con- 
trol introduced  by  electricity  enables  a  war-time  photog- 
rapher, at  the  safe  end  of  a  wire,  to  send  his  camera  aloft 
under  a  balloon  or  a  kite,  effectively  playing  the  spy.  In  a 
registry  which  commenced  in  purely  scientific  curiosity,  and 
which  to-day  serves  not  only  the  astronomer  but  the  fore- 
caster of  weather,  a  luminous  beam  is  a  pencil  without  w  eight 
which  records  from  instant  to  instant  variations  in  magnetic 
dip  and  inclination,  the  electrical  condition  of  the  air,  the  force 
and  direction  of  the  oscillations  which  herald  or  accompany 
an  earthquake.      In  its  simplest  form  this  kind  of  apparatus 


NEEDLESS   ALARM  359 

is  a  cylinder  of  sensitised  paper  which  performs  a  revolu- 
tion in  twenty-four  hours.  A  dot  of  light  streaming  from 
a  fluctuating  instrument  is  constantly  writing  on  the  sensi- 
tive surface  of  the  paper  the  path  or  the  pressure  to  be 
recorded. 

A  simple  automatic  recorder  of  earthquakes  might  once 
have  saved  Australia  from  alarm  bordering  on  panic. 
One  night,  a  few  years  ago,  all  the  three  cables  uniting  that 
country  with  the  rest  of  the  world  suddenly  parted.  As 
there  was  on  land  no  perceptible  shock  of  earthquake,  the 
disaster  was  suspected  to  be  the  work  of  an  invading  foe. 
The  troops  were  immediately  placed  under  arms,  and  with 
energy  and  haste  all  the  machinery  of  resistance  was  over- 
hauled and  made  ready.  All  this  was  needless,  for  it  was 
soon  ascertained  that  the  ocean  bed  adjoining  the  continent 
had  suddenly  moved  just  enough  to  break  the  cables  and 
do  no  further  damage.  Because  an  instrument  of  ordinary 
delicacy  was  lacking  to  register  this  simple  fact,  some  three 
million  souls  saw  reason  to  dread  an  armed  invader. 

At  the  close  of  Chapter  XIV  we  noted  the  exquisite 
apparatus  which  writes  in  ink  a  cable  message  as  it  issues 
from  beneath  the  sea.  An  electric  impulse  even  feebler 
may  be  recorded  photographically  as  it  sways  a  receiving- 
needle.  This  feat  may  play  a  part  in  cheapening  the 
cable  soon  to  be  laid  across  the  Pacific — for  a  distance 
longer  than  has  yet  been  attempted  by  the  telegraphic 
engineer. 

Astronomers  in  their  direct  use  of  the  eye  are  troubled 
by  "the  personal  equation,"  such  as  the  observer's  anticipa- 
tion  or  delay  in  noting  the  instant  of  a 
phenomenon.      To  eliminate  this   source  The  Personal  Equation 
of  error  is   the  purpose  of  an  invention       and  its  Remedy, 
by    the   Rev.  George   A.   Fargis,  of   the 
Georgetown    Observatory    in    Washington.        An    electri- 
cally driven  clock  moves  a  sensitised  sheet  of  paper,  catch- 


360    THE  CAMERA   AND  ELECTRICITY 

ing  the  image  of  a  star  at  the  instant  of  its  passage  across 
the  wires  of  a  telescope — the  time  of  transit  being  simul- 
taneously recorded  (Fig.  91).  In  a  widely  remote  sphere, 
that  of  animal  movement,  mention  has  been  made  of  Mr. 
Muybridge's  remarkable  pictures.  It  was  only  by  having 
electrical  control  of  his  cameras  that  those  pictures  were 


Fig.  91. 
Fargis  recorder. 

secured.  There  are  motions  swifter  still  to  be  depicted,  but 
none  of  them  so  swift  as  to  elude  the  sensitive  plate.  Turn- 
ing upon  its  ally  electricity,  it  makes  plain  its  most  devious 
paths,  its  most  abrupt  discharges.  Lightning,  natural 
and  artificial,  in  every  phase,  has  left  its  imprint  in  the 
camera  (Plate  XXII). 

The  phenomena  of  sound,  less  exacting  in  point  of  time, 

have,  of  course,  not  evaded  the  photographer.      Dr.  Raps 

of  Berlin  has  pictured  the  vibrations  of 

ThC  Phsto°ugndPhy  °f  an  or2an  Vipe,  of  a  hunting-horn,  as 
well  as  the  singing  of  the  vowels.  Pro- 
fessor Boltzmann,  and  other  investigators  of  mark,  have  de- 
picted the  complex  curves  of  the  telephone  in  oscillations 
as  rapid  as  3000  in  a  second.  At  the  London  Exhibition 
of  1862  Rudolph  Koenig  made  public  his  beautiful  draw- 
ings of  flames,  excited  to  sympathy  with  sounds.  From 
the  difficulty  of  following  so  great  a  master  of  the  pencil 
as  he,  his  method  was  little  cultivated  by  men  of  research. 
By  good  fortune,  the  motion  of  flame  as  it  rises  and 
falls  under  the  impact  of  sound  is,  comparatively  speaking, 
slow;  thus  one  of  the  first  phenomena  to  be  observed  by 
primitive  man  lends  itself  to   the  most  modern  methods  of 


By  H.  A.   Beasley,   Walbrook,    Baltimore,    Maryland. 


Plate  XXII.  From  the  Photographic  Times,  January,  igoo. 

By  J.    H.   Dunn,   New  York. 
PHOTOGRAPHS    OF    LIGHTNING. 


NEW  SOUND   PICTURES 


361 


depiction.  A  photographic  plate  is  moved  behind  the  lens 
of  a  camera  at  such  a  rate  that  during  each  vibration  of  a 
flame  the  plate  advances  by  a  space  at  least  twice  as  great  as 
the  width  of  the  flame.  With  such  an  apparatus  Professor 
Ernest  Merritt  of  Cornell  University,  in  1893,  found  it  just 
possible  to  photograph  the  flames  delineated  by  Koenig.1  In 
1897,  jointly  with  Professor  Edward  F.  Nichols,  he  used  an 
improved  camera,  with  acetylene  as  an  illuminant  instead  of 
common  gas.  The  photographs  were  now  defined  much  bet- 
ter than  those  of  four  years  before.    Professor  Nichols  says : 

When  we  attempt  to  read  such  a  record,  as  one  would  read 
the  trace  of  the  siphon  recorder  in  a  telegraphic  message,  or  as 
one  would  read  shorthand,  we  find  that  it  is  only  the  vowels  that 
produce  any  marked  agitation  of  the  flame.  All  those  accompa- 
nying mouth  sounds  which  introduce  and  close  each  syllable  in 
articulate  speech,  and  by  which,  in  great  measure,  we  are  able  to 
distinguish  the  different  words,  produce  a  very  feeble  and  often  an 
unrecognisable  effect  upon  the  flame.  The  records  are  indeed  the 
very  opposite  of  shorthand  writing,  not  only  that  instead  of  a  sin- 


i^M^i^JudiJ^H 


Fig.  92. 

The  sound  of  A  flat  photographed  from  a  manometric  flame. 

gle  character  to  a  syllable  we  have  sometimes  as  many  as  a  hun- 
dred oscillations  of  the  flame,  but  likewise  in  the  fact  that  while 
shorthand  is  made  up  of  words  with  the  vowels  left  out,  these 
photographs  represent  speech  with  the  consonants  suppressed. 
.  .  .  Not  only  are  the  subtile  differences  which  distinguish  the 
vowel  sounds  uttered  by  persons  speaking  various  dialects  mani- 
fested by  differences  in  the  flame  groupings,  but  the  individual 
peculiarities  in  the  utterance  of  different  speakers  using  the  same 
dialect  are  plainly  discernible  (Fig.  92). 2 

1  Physical  Review,  Vol.  I,  p.  166.  2  Nature,  Vol.  LIX,  p.  321. 


562    THE  CAMERA   AND  ELECTRICITY 

If  it  ever  becomes  possible  to  decipher  this  sound-script 
we  shall  come  to  the  same  goal  as  that  of  the  phonograph 
— and  by  a  very  different  path. 

Photography  with  a  plate  in  swift  motion  is  one  of  the 
most  searching  instruments  of  exploration  at  the  physicist's 
command.  All  that  the  astronomer  and 
Time  infinitesimal,  the  meteorologist  accomplish  with  a  sen- 
sitive plate  is  carried  to  a  new  scene 
when  the  telltale  changes  in  the  strength  of  a  current  are 
caught  in  minute  subdivisions  of  time.  A  curve-writing 
volt-meter  may  be  made  to  give  records  on  a  moving  plate 
running  to  within  the  thousandth  of  a  second  of  the  in- 
stant when  such  a  process  as  electrolysis,  electrolytic  polar- 
isation, voltaic  action,  or  the  charge  or  discharge  of  a  con- 
denser begins.1  Now  that  electricity  and  photography 
march  forward  in  the  same  yoke,  they  promise  us  insights 
of  superlative  importance.  It  is  what  occurs  in  less  than 
the  twinkling  of  an  eye,  the  effects  of  contact,  the  unions 
and  partings  of  molecules,  that  most  concern  the  modern 
inquirers  in  the  fields  of  physics  and  chemistry.  If  these 
phenomena  are  ever  imaged  upon  photographic  films,  in- 
vestigators will  possess  no  merely  curious  pictures,  but 
plain  hints  for  the  further  extension  of  human  sway  over 
both  matter  and  motion. 

We  have  now  come   to    the  end  of  our  hasty  review  of 

the  principal  feats  of  photography  in  its  aid  to  science,  art, 

and  literature  —  in  its  furtherance,  not  un- 

The  Eyeof  Art  far  Tran-  important,    of   new    recreation.      If  elcc- 

scends  the   Eye  of  ...  . 

Nature.  tricity    in    the    nineteenth    century    has 

advanced   art   and    science  by  leaps  and 

bounds,  hardly  less  decisive  is  the  impulse  due  to  its  sister 

force,  light,  as  a  universal  limner  and  explorer.      The  first 

1  Address  on  the  "  Phenomena  of  the  Time  Infinitesimal,"  by  Professor 
E.  I..  Nichols  before  Section  B, —physics, —American  Association  lor  the 
Advancement  <>f  Science,  1893. 


AN    ALL-BEHOLDING   EYE  363 

tasks  of  the  photographer  lay  in  creating  a  plate  which 
should  approach  as  nearly  as  possible  to  the  powers  of  the 
eye  and  the  hand — in  true  representation  of  form,  of  colour, 
of  relief,  of  motion.  His  later  work  is  crowned  by  the 
production  of  plates  which  far  transcend  the  capability  of 
vision  in  being  quicker,  more  persistent,  and  in  having  a 
susceptibility  to  rays  which  fall  upon  the  retina  only  to 
prove  it  blind ;  while  every  impression  becomes  as  per- 
manent as  ink  can  make  it.  Thus  the  most  exquisite  of  all 
the  senses  is  enlarged  in  scope  as  no  other  is,  or  ever  may 
be.  The  modern  camera,  moreover,  lends  itself  to  forms 
of  reproduction  totally  new  in  their  verity,  beauty,  and 
cheapness,  so  that  the  photographer  has  ushered  in  nothing 
less  than  the  democracy  of  art.  While  he  brings  many  an 
ancient  aptitude  to  a  new  fruitfulness,  he  also  creates  a 
thousand  novel  modes  of  attack  upon  the  infinite  Unknown. 


CHAPTER  XXV 


LANGUAGE 


I^HAT  our  ancestors  were  capital  draughtsmen  long  be- 
fore they  came  to  articulate  speech  is  probable  from  the 
extreme   antiquity   of  excellent   pictures,  and   from   abun- 
dant  proof    that    spoken    language    is   a 
Much  to  see,  Little     comparatively  recent  acquisition.      Why 
to  Hear.  ^g  art  0f  foe  depicter  may  have  long  pre- 

ceded that  of  the  speaker  we  can  easily 
understand.  Let  us  ask  a  primitive  wanderer  to  live  over 
again  a  day  of  his  life  for  us,  and  the  reason  will  be  sunshine 
clear.  As  he  roams  about  from  dawn  to  dusk  in  quest  of 
food  he  passes  from  thicket  to  plain,  from  plain  to  swamp, 
from  swamp  to  sea-shore — with  all  their  variety  of  changing 
scenes.  Here  he  catches  a  glimpse  of  a  bunch  of  alluring 
grapes,  there  he  sees  a  bush  laden  with  nuts,  anon  he  de- 
tects the  spreading  leaves  which  betoken  a  root  easily  <.\u^ 
from  the  beach — and  all  the  livelong  day  hardly  once  does 
the  man  hear  a  sound  that  bears  him  a  message.  If  a 
cricket  chirps  what  matters  it  to  him?  If  a  bird  trills  a 
few  notes,  the  roulade  is  addressed,  not  to  his  ears,  but  to 
those  of  its  mate.  Such  beasts  of  prey  as  lurk  in  the  tall 
grasses  of  the  swamp,  or  in  the  underbrush  of  the  woods, 
find  their  account  in  a  tread  of  the  stealthiest,  in  a  silence 
rarely  broken  except  at  the  season  of  espousal.  It  is  not 
in  listening  for  a  grunt,  or  a  yelp,  so  much  as  in  watching 

364 


"  GO  "  365 

for  a  telltale  footprint,  that  the  man  keeps  himself  safe 
from  these  foes.  And  hence,  because  his  livelihood  and  his 
life  depend  almost  wholly  upon  his  sight,  and  scarcely  at 
all  upon  his  hearing,  his  eyes  concern  themselves  with  the 
art  of  representation  long  before  his  ears  take  part  in  the 
work  of  bringing  the  absent  into  the  here,  and  making 
the  past  re-transact  itself  in  the  now.1 

In  Chapter  XIX  we  endeavoured  to  recall  some  of  the 
principal  steps  by  which  the  modeller  and  the  depicter  be- 
gan their  tasks.  The  free  and  skilful  hand,  indispensable 
to  both  those  artists,  did  much  more  early  in  the  human 
day  than  mould  the  clay  for  a  rude  effigy,  or  draw  in 
sand  the  profile  of  a  chief.  Dogs  and  ants,  together  with 
many  brutes  and  insects  much  less  intelligent,  can  give 
signals  which  mean,  "  Come  with  me,"  but  the  hand  of  a 
primitive  fire-kindler  as  it  pointed  to  a  dwindling  blaze, 
and  then  to  the  forest  whence  a  junior  was  desired  to  fetch 
more  fuel,  could  signify,  "  Go,"  a  message  often  of  much 
more  consequence,  and  a  message  to  which  the  mere  brute 
has  never  risen.  In  like  manner  a  primitive  mother  could  , 
show  her  young  the  berries  or  the  nuts  so  much  hidden  by 
leaves  on  a  distant  bush  as  to  elude  the  little  ones'  gaze ; 
or  a  sentinel  with  the  safety  of  silence  could  point  out  to 
his  companions  the  crouching  tiger  otherwise  unseen. 
His  simple  gesture  said  "  tiger"  almost  as  plainly  as  when 
to-day  a  visitor  to  a  zoological  garden  utters  the  word. 
That  there  is  a  close  correspondence  between  the  infancy 
of  the  race  and  that  of  a  modern  child  every  cradle  bears 

1  A  question  which  might  well  engage  the  thought  of  a  musical  scholar  is, 
Why  is  great  music  so  recent?  Why  did  Bach,  Beethoven,  and  Wagner  follow 
so  long  after  Phidias  and  Praxiteles,  and  the  inventors  of  the  five  orders  of 
classical  architecture?  Does  part  of  the  explanation  reside  in  the  fact  that  for 
ages  there  was  more  for  man  to  see  than  to  hear,  so  that  the  cultivation  of 
hearing  lingered  after  that  of  vision?  For  ceons  the  eye  could  "  dismount 
the  highest  star,"  while  the  ear  had  not  heard  its  chief  message  — the  word — 
because  human  lips  were  still  to  be  unsealed. 


366  LANGUAGE 

witness.  Weeks  before  a  babe  can  say  a  syllable,  ask  it, 
"Where  is  mama?"  and  the  little  eyes  and  hands  may 
move  forward  in  the  reply,  "  There." 

From  the  beginning  man  must  have  had  in  common 
with  other  animals  some  powers  of  vocal  expression,  and 
more  ample  than  theirs  because  he  had  more  to  express. 
His  cries  at  first  probably  denoted  the  simplest  and 
strongest  appetites  and  feelings,  —  hunger,  pain,  rage,  and 
the  like, — rising  in  due  time  to  a  chatter  such  as  that  by 
which  existing  anthropoids  signify  comfort,  greetings,  en- 
dearment. Professor  Shaler  has  remarked  how  much  more 
varied  and  expressive  are  the  voices  of  dogs  reared  for  gen- 
erations by  civilised  men  than  the  few  and  simple  barkings 
of  dogs  in  the  camps  of  savages.1  One  of  the  decisive 
characteristics  of  the  race  now  human  consists  in  its  faculty 
of  imitation,  and  this  must  have  early  borne  a  part  in 
enlarging  the  utterances  of  man.  We  have  noted  how  at 
the  outset  of  graphic  representation  the  limner  imitated  the 
profile  of  a  human  head,  or  the  contour  of  a  horse.  Long 
afterward  the  simulation  of  sounds  was  to  play  an  equally 
important  role  in  leading  to  language  by  an  appeal  to  the 
ear  instead  of  to  the  eve.  In  one  case  as  in  the  other  the 
beginnings  may  have  been  matters  of  sheer  sport.  In 
rearing  lambs,  and  the  young  foxes  and  wolves  from  which 
dogs  may  be  descended,  there  was  an  incitement  to  imitate 
bleating  and  snarling,  especially  on  the  part  of  children. 
Proficiency  in  this  art  could  easily  extend  itself  to  repeat- 
ing the  utterances  of  beasts  of  prey.  The  talent  which 
began  in  sketching  the  outline  of  a  bear  came  to  a  rightful 
succession  when  a  mimic  amused  himself  in  echoing  the 
growl  of  the  beast.  Suppose  such  a  mimic  to  be  a  watcher 
on  the  lookout  from  the  topmost  branch  of  an  oak.  lie 
detects  in  the  distance  the  ambling  figure  of   a  bear.     I  lis 

1  Domesticated  Animals,  Their  Relation  to  Man  and  to  //is  Advancement  in 
Civilisation,  by  N.  S.  Shaler.     New  \'<<rV,  Scribner,  1895. 


ONLY   MAN    CAN    NAME  367 

comrades  to  whom  he  points  out  the  animal  fail  to  descry 
it.  He  imitates  the  growl  of  the  slinking  brute — at  once  his 
comrades  know  what  to  look  for.  They  turn  their  eyes  from 
the  trees  to  the  ground  and  see  the  bear  distinctly. 

Here  emerges  the  naming  faculty  unshared  by  man  with 
any  other  creature.  Many  animals  utter  cries  of  alarm, 
but  the  sentinel  with  wit  enough  to 
mimic  a  cry  so  as  to  indicate  the  beast  The  Naming  Faculty, 
which  utters  that  cry  has  taken  a  leap 
which  divides  him  and  his  race  forever  from  animals  ex- 
pert enough  in  mere  warning  or  mimicry,  but  lacking 
the  intelligence  which  impresses  sounds  into  a  means 
of  naming.  Uncounted  species  high  and  low  in  the 
scale  of  life  are  able  to  utter  the  wail  of  pain,  the  whine 
of  fear ;  man  alone  can  plainly  tell  what  has  caused  his 
pain,  what  excites  his  dread.  New  avenues  of  escape  from 
danger,  new  means  of  advantage,  and  new  sources  of  social 
cheer,  came  to  men  so  soon  as  they  could  utter  a  name,  in 
however  imperfect  a  fashion.  Here  the  language  of  the 
hand  began  to  be  supplemented  in  the  most  useful  way, 
and  in  many  cases  altogether  replaced.  To  quote  Professor 
Whitney :  "  The  voice  is  on  the  whole  the  most  available 
means  of  communication.  It  acts  with  the  least  expendi- 
ture of  effort.  It  leaves  the  hands,  much  more  variously 
efficient  and  hard-worked  members,  at  leisure  for  other 
work  at  the  same  time;  and  it  most  easily  compels  attention 
from  any  direction."1  A  scout,  invisible  in  darkness,  fog, 
or  tempest,  could  now  easily  bid  his  fellows  find  their  way 
to  a  cave,  or  warn  them  to  avoid  a  clump  of  trees  where  a 
foe  lurked  in  ambush. 

Alliances  between  gesture  and  speech,  between  mimicry 
and  names,  which  date  back  to  the  very  birth  of  human 
language,  have  their  reminders  before  us  at  this  hour.  An 
orator  recounts  the  details  of  a  shipwreck  in  which  he  was  a 

1  Life  and  Growth  of  Language,  International  Scientific  Series,  p.  293. 


368  LANGUAGE 

sufferer — and    his   hands  are   only  less   eloquent   than    Ins 

tongue.      A  child  points  to  a  cow  in  its  pasture  and  says, 

"  Moo-moo,"  by  way  of  a  name.     When 

Spontaneous  Utter-  i  r.-i  ,- 

ance  the    little    one    comes    to  town    from    its 

home  in  the  country  it  tells  how  a  loco- 
motive was  its  carrier  by  saying,  "  Shoo-shoo,"  and  turning 
its  arms  in  imitation  of  the  engine's  revolving  wheels. 
We  speak  of  the  "  cuckoo,"  the  "  peetweet,"  the  "  whip- 
poorwill,"  the  "  katydid,"  in  names  which  they  themselves 
have  suggested  to  us.  Hundreds  of  other  common 
terms — "  crackle,"  "  sizzle,"  "  buzz,"  "  whir,"  and  the  like — 
testify  every  day  to  the  debt  that  sense  owes  to  sound,  to 
the  important  contribution  by  onomatopoeia  to  the  mintage 
of  words.  Another  well-spring  of  speech  deserves  a  mo- 
ment's heed.  A  few  syllabic  sounds  mount  of  themselves 
to  the  lips  of  a  babe,  and  these,  at  first  by  their  seniors, 
are  taken  to  mean  definite  persons  and  things.  Sir  John 
Lubbock  has  ascertained  that  "  pa  "  and  "  ma  "  are  among 
the  very  first  because  the  easiest  utterances  of  a  child  ; 
and  "pa"  and  "ma"  have  long  been  appropriated  by 
parents  to  signify  themselves.  All  young  children  have 
difficulty  in  repeating  their  own  names;  for  months  Stella 
may  call  herself  "  Cally,"  and  George  may  say  that  he  is 
"  Joe,"  simply  because  their  powers  of  articulation  are  but 
little  developed.  By  reducing  the  long  words  of  their 
elders  to  pronounceable  form,  and  by  downright  invention, 
— based  upon  spontaneous  sounds, — children  have  been 
known  to  devise  long  vocabularies  for  themselves.  In  ^<> 
doing  they  have  undoubtedly  shed  liyht  on  one  of  the 
methods  by  which  early  speech  began. 

When  primitive  man  had  advanced  somewhat  in  the  fac- 
ulty of  naming  we  can  imagine  him  passing  from  things  to 
the  qualities  of  things.      Terms  such   as  "warm,"  Id," 

"wet,"  "dry,"  "long,"  "short,"  would    spring   to  his   lips 
—  at  first  perhaps  connected  with  th<  usually  pre- 


SOUNDS  MEAN   MORE  AND  MORE    369 

senting  a  specific  quality  in  a  striking  degree.      In  com- 
mon parlance   to-day  we   speak  of  a  thing  "  as  dry  as  a 
bone,"  or  "  as  cold  as  ice."    When  a  deaf- 
mute    wishes    tO    signify    "  red  "    he    pro-        The  Adjective  and 

trudes  his  tongue  and  touches  it  with  his 
finger.1  In  the  language  of  gesture  the 
arms  are  slightly  bent  and  rapidly  flapped  to  mean  "  bird  "  ; 
but  the  same  sign  has  to  serve  for  "  flight,"  or  "  flying," 
and  which  of  the  three  meanings  is  intended  to  be  con- 
veyed must  be  judged  by  the  onlooker  from  the  rest  of  the 
story.  Early  in  the  formation  of  articulate  speech  there 
must  have  been  the  setting  apart  a  sound  to  signify  what 
a  person  or  a  thing  does,  in  addition  to  what  the  person  or 
thing  is ;  the  verb  was  created  in  succession  to  the  adjec- 
tive and  the  noun.  Then  slowly  from  the  adjective  and 
the  verb  there  arose  the  power  to  name  such  conceptions 
as  "  good  "  and  "  right,"  which  end  at  last  in  the  highly 
abstract  terms  of  the  man  of  science,  the  philosopher,  the 
metaphysician.  There  was  inestimable  gain  in  the  steadily 
growing'  power  to  symbolise  by  sounds  as  well  as  by 
graphic  delineation.  Ideas  became  more  tenacious  when 
they  were  rooted  in  the  memory  both  through  the  ear  and 
the  eye — as  every  student  discovers  anew  when  he  learns 
a  foreign  tongue  both  in  speech  and  in  print.  But  let  the 
art  of  gestural  or  graphic  depiction  rise  as  high  as  it  can, 

1  In  its  achievement  of  lip-reading  the  art  of  communication  returns  in  most 
ingenious  fashion  to  something  of  its  first  estate.  As  the  ages  of  human  prog- 
ress have  succeeded  each  other,  the  misfortune  of  deafness  has  meant  more 
and  more  of  deprivation.  For  the  aid  of  the  deaf-mute  an  elaborate  code  of 
manual  and  gestural  signs  was  long  ago  contrived.  It  has  been  the  life-work 
of  Professor  Alexander  Melville  Bell  and  other  eminent  teachers  virtually  to 
unstop  deaf  ears,  and  unloosen  the  tongues  of  the  dumb  by  a  happy  and  origi- 
nal impressment  of  sight.  The  system  is  based  upon  the  close  observation 
of  the  moving  lips  of  a  speaker,  whose  words  are  known  through  the  slight 
and  wholly  incidental  movements  which  accompany  their  utterance.  Then, 
to  supplement  this  hearing  by  the  eye,  the  lips  of  the  dumb  are  patiently  in- 
structed to  imitate  the  motions  of  speech,  with  the  effect  of  distinct  articulation. 


370  LANGUAGE 

it  soon  comes  to  rigid  limits  only  to  be  overpassed  by 
vocal  utterance.  What  scheme  of  manual  signs  could 
interpret  Kant's  Critique  of  Pure  Reason,  or  Herbert 
Spencer's  First  Principles}  'So  profound  are  the  obli- 
gations  of  thought  to  language  that  Professor  Max  Miiller 
maintains  that  thought  and  language  are  identical.  Pie  says  : 
"  Words  without  thought  are  dead  sounds;  thoughts  with- 
out words  are  nothing ;  to  think  is  to  speak  low,  to  speak 
is  to  think  aloud."  x  Another  eminent  philologist,  Wilhelm 
Bleek,  has  said : 

It  is  through  language  and  by  language  that  man.  as  a  think- 
ing being,  has  developed  himself.  It  is  communication  by  means 
of  .speech  that  brings  his  thinking  to  greater  clearness,  by  bringing 
the  different  modes  of  thought  into  mutual  furthering  communi- 
cation with  each  other,  by  means  of  speech  man  is  able  to  hold 
with  more  tenacity  the  impressions  already  obtained,  and  thus 
better  to  combine  the  old  with  those  whose  action  is  fresher,  and 
generally  each  with  every  other,  and  to  work  them  up  into  intui- 
tion. It  is  the  spring  of  self-consciousness  inasmuch  as  it  enables 
man  to  distinguish  himself  and  his  emotions  from  the  external 
world,  and  so  to  become  const-ions  of  both.  Thus  it  is  only  by 
means  of  it  that  true  development  of  thought  can  take  place. 
Wilhelm  von  Humboldt  said  in  his  last  letter  to  Goethe:  "The 
entire  possession  of  ideas  is  just  what  we,  placed  outside  of  our- 
selves, can  cause  to  pass  over  into  others." - 

Professor  William  I).  Whittle}-,  the  foremost  American 
philologist  of  his  time,  tells  us : 

It  is  not  easy  to  estimate  the  advantage  won  by  the  mind  in 
the  obtaining  of  a  language.  Its  confused  impressions  are  thus 
reduced  to  older,  brought  under  the  distinct  review  of  conscious- 
ness, and  within  reach  of  reflection  ;  an  apparatus  is  provided  with 
which  it  can  work  like  an  artisan  with  his  tools.  .  .  .  By  as  much 
as,  supplied  with  tools,  man  can  traverse  space,  handle  and  shape 
materials,  frame  textures,  penetrate  distance,  observe  the  minute, 
beyond  what  he  could  compass  with  his  unequipped  physical 

1  Science  of  Language,  Vol.  I,  p.  527.  London  ami  New  York,  1891, 
I  criticism,  see  Max  Miiller  <mJ  tin-  Science  of  Language,  p.  j<>,  by 
W.  I).  Whitney.     New  York,  Appleton,  [892. 

-  On  the  Origin  .■/  1  .   p.  43.     Translated  by  Thomas  Davidson. 

London  ami  New  York,  i> 


SPEECH    INCITES    THOUGHT         371 

powers,  by  so  much  is  the  reach  and  grasp,  the  penetration  and 
accuracy,  of  his  thought  increased  by  speech.  This  part  of  the 
value  of  speech  is  by  no  means  easy  to  bring  to  full  realisation, 
because  our  minds  are  so  used  to  working  by  and  through  words 
that  they  cannot  even  conceive  of  the  plight  they  would  be  in  if 
deprived  of  such  helps.  But  we  may  think,  for  example,  of  what 
the  mathematician  would  be  without  figures  and  symbols.1 

With  this  dictum  of  Professor  Whitney's  in  mind,  let  us 
try  to  add  together  ten  lines,  each  bearing  a  number  ex- 
pressed in  ten  Roman  numerals.  The  feat  is  all  but  im- 
possible ;  reduce  the  numbers  to  the  Arabic  notation  and 
the  task  at  once  melts  to  a  trifle.  Thus  does  a  simple  and 
adequate  symbolism  promote  the  science  and  art  of  number. 
In  that  larger  field  of  expression,  language,  the  ability  to 
denote  general  ideas  by  words  has  been  a  transcendent 
means  of  multiplying  such  ideas;  these  more  conclusively 
than  ever  have  withdrawn  man,  the  thinker,  the  abstract 
reasoner,  from  the  lowly  stock  which  remained  inarticulate 
when  he  arrived  at  speech.  Physiologists  of  authority  are 
in  accord  as  to  the  extreme  demands  which  language 
makes  upon  the  powers  of  the  brain.  Nothing,  they  tell 
us,  has  done  so  much  to  increase  cerebral  weight  and  com- 
plexity as  the  development  of  articulate  speech.  It  is,  in- 
deed, that  development  which  accounts  for  the  largeness  of 
brain  which  is  distinctive  of  man.  By  way  of  prefacing  a 
consideration  of  this  point,  let  us  note  three  of  the  most  re- 
markable human  skulls  thus  far  unearthed. 

Among   human   fossils   the    most  remarkable  skulls  are 
those,  first,  of  the   Cro-Magnon  race  of  neolithic  France; 
second,  the  Neanderthal  cranium  found 
near  Diisseldorf ;  and  third,  that  of  PitJie-    Three  Notable  Skulls. 
canthropus    ercctus,    discovered    by    Dr. 
Eugene  Dubois  in  Java.      In  size  and  form  the  Cro-Magnon 
bkulls  denote  that  their  possessors  were  men  of  remarkable 
intelligence,  a  view  corroborated  by  the  etchings  on  bone, 
1  Life  and  Growth  of  Language,  p.  23.     International  Scientific  Series. 


372  LANGUAGE 

wrought  by  these  primitive  artists,  and  found  near  their 
remains.  Concerning  the  Neanderthal  cranium,  Professor 
Huxley  said  in  Man's  Place  in  Nature: 

Under  whatever  aspect  we  view  this  cranium,  whether  we  re- 
gard its  vertical  depression,  the  enormous  thickness  of  its  supra- 
ciliary  ridges,  its  sloping  occiput,  or  its  long  and  straight 
squamosal  suture,  we  meet  with  apedike  characters,  stamping  it 
as  the  most  pithecoid  of  human  crania  yet  discovered. 

This  was  said  in  i860.  Thirty-four  years  later  Dr.  Dubois 
discovered  the  famous  skull  of  Pithecanthropus  erectus  in 
Java.  The  next  year,  in  1895,  at  the  International  Zo- 
ological Congress,  in  Leyden,  this  skull,  with  the  other  re- 
mains found  with  it,  were  discussed  by  twelve  experts. 
Three  held  them  to  belong  to  a  low  race  of  man  ;  three 
declared  them  to  be  those  of  a  man-like  ape  of  great  size; 
the  rest  maintained  that  they  belonged  to  an  intermediate 
form  which  directly  connected  primitive  man  with  the 
anthropoid  apes.  "This  last  view,"  says  Professor 
Haeckel,  "is  the  right  one,  and  accords  with  the  laws  of 
logical  inference.  Pithecanthropus  erectus  is  truly  a  Plio- 
cene remainder  of  that  famous  group  of  highest  catarrhines 
which  were  the  immediate  pithecoid  ancestors  of  man."  l 

And  now  let  us  listen  to  an  ethnologist  of  eminence  who 
devoted  his  life  to  the  study  of  language.  At  the  meet- 
ing of  the  American  Association  for  the 
a  Leap dueto Language.  Advancement  of  Science  in  1886,  Mr. 
Horatio  Hale  delivered  an  address  "  On 
the  Origin  of  Languages  and  the  Antiquity  of  Speaking 
Man."  In  the  course  of  a  review  which  summed  up  con- 
victions due  to  a  lifetime  of  research,  and  which  he  sup- 
ported by  much  detailed  evidence,  he  said: 

Ii  is  impossible  to  suppose  that  a  people  possessing  the  intel- 
lectual endowments  <>f  the  Cro-Magnon  race  would  long  remain 

1  The  Last  Link.  London,  Adam  &  Charles  Black;  New  York,  Macmillan 
&  Co.,  1898. 


SPEECH    EXPLAINS   A   LEAP  373 

in  an  uncivilised  state,  if  they  were  once  placed  in  a  country 
where  the  climate  and  other  surroundings  were  favourable  to  the 
increase  of  population  and  to  improvement  in  the  arts  of  life. 
Even  in  the  then  rigorous  climate  and  other  hard  conditions  of 
western  Europe,  they  had  advanced,  as  Dr.  Paul  Broca  declares, 
"to  the  very  threshold  of  civilisation."  What  must  they  have 
become  in  Egypt  and  in  southern  Asia?  In  point  of  fact,  during 
a  comparatively  brief  space  of  time,  ranging  from  five  thousand 
to  seven  thousand  years  ago,  the  men  of  these  regions  developed 
in  widely  distant  centres — in  Egypt,  in  Mesopotamia,  in  Phoenicia, 
in  northern  India,  and  in  China — a  high  and  varied  civilisation 
and  culture,  whose  memorials,  in  their  works  of  art  and  their  lit- 
erature, astonish  us  at  this  day,  and  in  some  respects  defy  imita- 
tion. To  what  circumstance  can  we  attribute  this  sudden  and 
wonderful  flowering  of  human  genius,  after  countless  ages  of  tor- 
pidity, but  to  the  one  all-sufficient  cause — the  acquisition  of  the 
power  of  speech? 

The  particular  impetus  here  may  have  lain  in  the  mas- 
tery not  only  of  some  decisive  access  in  articulate  speech, 
but  in  a  transition  from  mere  portraiture  to  narrative  pic- 
turing, such  as  the  pictographs  of  the  North  American 
Indians  collected  and  interpreted  by  the  late  Colonel  Gar- 
rick  Mallery.1  By  such  a  step  forward  records  of  a  new 
significance  and  permanence  might  see  the  light.  Know- 
ledge which  before  had  died  away  in  mere  vocal  utterance, 
or  observed  gesture,  could  now  be  graphically  perpetuated  ; 
at  a  stroke  the  casualties  of  oral  tradition  might  begin 
to  disappear.  As  writing  gradually  emerged  from  hiero- 
glyphics and  pictographs  there  was  advance  in  the  great 
art  by  which  knowledge  was  accumulated,  and  the  expe- 
riences of  the  boldest,  and  the  thoughts  of  the  wisest, 
were  placed  at  the  service  of  their  brethren  far  distant  in 
both  place  and  time. 

The  later  steps  of  the  development  of  language  have 
been  in  its  graphic  forms  and  are  plainly  within  the  purview 
of  the  student;    because   they  directly  illustrate  permuta- 

1  First,  Fourth,  and  Tenth  Annual  Reports,  United  States  Bureau  of  Eth- 
nology, Washington. 


374  LANGUAGE 

tion  they  give  a  new  warrant  to  the  arguments  of  this  book. 
The  new  birth  of  knowledge,  the   revival   of   the  spirit  of 

inquiry  unhampered  by  tradition,  which 
The  Leap  due  to  Printing,  commenced  in  Europe  four  centuries  ago, 

has  been  largely  indebted  to  the  art  of 
printing,  to  the  re-invention  of  movable  types  by  Gutenberg 
of  Mainz.  Isaac  Taylor,  in  The  Alphabet,  Vol.  II,  p.  182, 
says : 

In  the  fourteenth  century  engraved  wooden  blocks  were  used 
to  print  playing-cards  and  sacred  pictures.  The  next  step  was  to 
engrave  a  few  words  below  the  picture,  as  in  the  case  of  St.  Chris- 
topher, with  two  lines  of  legend,  dated  in  1423.  The  revolution 
effected  by  Gutenberg  consisted  not  so  much  in  the  printing- 
press  as  in  his  subsequent  invention  of  movable  types,  which  were 
first  cut  in  intaglio,  and  then  cast  in  metal  from  the  wooden  ma- 
trix. Without  these  types  his  enterprise  of  printing  the  great  folio 
Bible,  completed  in  1455,  would  have  been  impracticable.  Mova- 
ble types,  however,  have  been  repeatedly  invented.  They  were 
probably  used  for  Babylonian  and  Assyrian  seals,  and  were  un- 
doubtedly employed  long  before  the  Christian  era  by  the  potters 
of  Thasos,  as  is  proved  by  the  occasional  inversion  of  potters' 
marks.  They  were  again  invented  in  China  in  the  truth  century 
a.  D.,  and  were  also  used  about  the  same  time  for  stamping  the 
legends  on  the  coins  of  Tibet. 

The  essence  of  this  great  invention  lay  in  having  the 
types  movable,  so  that  each  might  be  an  element  in  that 
pci  imitation  of  letters  which  we  call  a  word. 

Long  before  the  making  of  such    types   the   same    prin- 
ciple   hat!    been    arrived    at    in    the    alphabet — certainly 
the   most  extraordinary   and    influential 
origin  of  the  Alphabet,  achievement    in    the    history    of    human 
expression.      It    appears    to    have    been 
attained  by  a  series  of  small  adaptations,  one  after  another, 
at   the   hands   of   men  who   did  not  foresee  the  surpassing 
importance  of  labours  which,  indeed,  were  more  in  the  na- 
ture of  unintended  discovery  than  o\  deliberate  contrivance. 
Tin-  alphabet  took  its  rise  in   picture-writing.      The  picture 
of   a  thing  stood  for  the  thing,  and  when  the  picture  was 


<3  A  7*7 


THE   ALPHABET'S   BEGINNING       375 

seen  the  name  of  the  thing  was  pronounced.  Thus  the 
Egyptians  represented  "  mouth  "  by  an  outline  of  a  mouth. 
Whoever  saw  that  outline  said  "Rho,"  the  Egyptian  for 
mouth.  But  the  sound  "rho  "  could  occur  in  the  language 
with  other  meanings.  The  next  step,  then,  was  to  indicate 
the  sound  "rho,"  whenever  itwas  intended  to  mean  "mouth," 
by  the  picture   of  a   mouth,  which  was   gradually  in   time 

conventionalised    (Fig.    93).       Finally   the  

vowel  was  disregarded,  and  a  picture  of  a 
mouth  came  to  represent  R,  as  a  sound  and 
as  a  written  letter,  under  any  and  all  cir- 
cumstances.   The  sign  which  first  had  stood  Fig.  93. 
for  a  thing,  and  then  for  the  sound  of  its     "R»"  from  "Rho>" 

111  lie  Egyptian  for 

name,  was  now  completely  detached  from  „  utll  ->  with 
its  original  source  and  meaning,  so  as  at  Phoenician  de- 
last  to  signify  a  sound  simply  and  only.  rived  forms- 
In  this  way  the  Egyptians  worked  out  a  complete  alphabet 
in  the  modern  sense,  but  they  never  applied  it  in  its  purity. 
They  retained  much  of  picturing  in  their  writing,  apparently 
unaware  that  picturing  could  with  advantage  be  wholly 
superseded  by  a  sign  for  each  of  the  few  sounds  with 
which  all  the  words  of  a  full  vocabulary  may  be  formed. 
It  is  asserted,  but  so  far  unproved,  that  the  Phoenicians 
perfected  the  alphabetical  principle  which  they  derived 
from  the  Egyptians.  At  last,  by  whomsoever  accom- 
plished, the  letters  which  formed  the  elements  of  names, 
or  other  words,  became  so  simple  that,  few  though  they 
were,  they  sufficed  to  build  the  amplest  speech.  That  lan- 
guage may  be  considered  as  jointed,  that  its  joints  are 
separable,  and  that,  for  all  their  fewness,  they  may  yield 
permutations  in  myriads,  is  surely  as  pregnant  a  discovery 
as  ever  has  fallen  to  the  lot  of  man.  In  modern  Eng- 
lish 26  letters  produce  no  fewer  than  250,000  words  in 
an  exhaustive  dictionary  which  includes  technical  terms. 
The  Chinese,   with   singular  conservatism,   have  clung  to 


376  LANGUAGE 

abbreviated  pictures  for  each  individual  object  or  person, 
relation  or  idea.,  with  the  result  that  their  written  char- 
acters are  nearly  50,000  in  number.  Incomparably  better 
is  the  plan  which  constructs  a  word  from  its  simplest  com- 
ponent sounds,  and  gives  each  of  these  sounds  a  sign  easily 
written  or  printed.  Professor  A.  Melville  Hell,  in  his 
Visible  Speech  and  Vocal  Physiology^  and  also  in  his 
World- English,  has  pointed  out  the  shortcomings  of 
the  English  alphabet, — its  failures  to  match  sounds  with 
signs, — and  proposed  a  complete  series  of  symbols  which 
would  shorten  by  as  much  as  a  year  the  time  needed  for 
the  mastery  of  the  English  tongue.1  The  World- English 
alphabet  consists  of  forty-four  elements.  The  symbols  of 
"  visible  speech  "  are  adapted  to  the  expression  of  the  artic- 
ulate sounds  in  all  languages,  and  thus  proffer  themselves 
as  the  foundation  of  a  universal  tongue. 

Taking  the   English  alphabet  as  it  stands,  if  every  per- 
mutation of  it  were  pronounceable  and  charged  with  mean- 
ing, 9  of  its  letters  would  be  enough  to 
Permutations  Possible  give    us    362,880   words   as   against    the 
and  Actual.  250,000  to  be  contained  in  the  new  Ox- 

ford Dictionary.  If  the  whole  26  letters, 
from  A  to  Z,  were  capable  of  like  permutation,  the  product 
would  be  no  fewer  than  403,291,461,126,605,635,584,000,- 
000  words.  In  the  arrangements  and  rearrangements  oi 
the  10  Arabic  numerals  in  mathematics,  in  the  endless  as- 
semblages possible  to  the  88  notes  of  an  ordinary  piano, 
there  is  a  much  wider  play  of  permutation  than  in  word- 
making.  So,  too,  in  the  sphere  of  chemistry,  its  seventy 
or  eighty  elements  may  be  combined  to  form  substances 
all  but  infinite   in   their  variety  ;    and   here  we   come  upon 

1  These  works  are  published  by  the  Yult:i   Bureau,  Washington.      Visible 
Speech  is  now  employed  in  America  in  teaching  si\  thousand  deaf  pupils.     It 
tuse  of  iliis  parti,  ular  use  ()f  tlic  symbols  in  tliis  country  that  their  value 
in  general  education  is  less  widely  understood  here  than  in  Europe. 


SPEECH    A    SOCIAL   BOND  377 

strange  contrasts  between  the  combining  power  of  one 
element  and  the  inertness  of  another.  Carbon  enters  into 
so  enormous  a  number  of  important  compounds  as  to  have 
a  "  chemistry  "  to  itself,  while  argon  and  helium  seem  to 
be  entirely  devoid  of  uniting  power.  However  numerous 
the  compounds  created  from  the  elements  of  the  chemist, 
each  bears  a  distinct  name.  The  dictionary  has  many 
other  terms  than  those  of  the  chemical  laboratory,  and 
language  far  excels  the  permutations  possible  to  the  fol- 
lowers of  Lavoisier,  for  words  may,  in  turn,  be  united  to 
form  statements  numberless.  The  infinity  of  observation 
and  experience,  of  interpretative  and  imaginative  power, 
may  all  be  told  as  words  flow  into  the  sentences  of  the  ex- 
plorer and  worker,  the  thinker  and  poet. 

Speech  has  incidentally  done  man  a  service  so  inestima- 
ble as  to  demand  a  closing  word.  As  we  endeavour  to 
recall    the    successive    developments    of 

1  j       1  1  Language, 

language,  and  observe  how  names  once  the  SocialiSer 

as  clearly  recognisable  as  the  "  meeow  " 
which  a  child  confers  upon  a  cat  have  become  slurred  by 
laziness,  or  combined  with  sounds  purely  interjectional  in 
origin,  we  catch  a  glimpse  of  the  highest  office  borne  by 
speech  in  the  making  of  man.  If  a  tribe,  having  arrived  at 
a  somewhat  full  vocabulary,  was  to  continue  to  enjoy  its 
use,  that  tribe  had  to  stick  together;  otherwise  words 
would  soon  lose  their  significance.  By  as  much  as  a  lan- 
guage contains  terms  whose  meaning  must  be  learned 
afresh  by  every  individual,  by  just  so  much  has  that  lan- 
guage put  a  premium  upon  social  ties,  upon  the  capacity 
and  the  will  to  live  together,  to  co-operate  in  defence  or 
attack.  It  is  only  very  early  in  the  human  day  that  we 
can  allowably  imagine,  as  at  the  beginning  of  this  chapter, 
a  wanderer  going  forth  by  himself  in  search  of  food.  In 
an  era  far  remote  in  his  history  man  must  have  found 
comfort,  cheer,   and  safety  in   the   bonds  of  what,  in   the 


378  LANGUAGE 

germ,  was  society.  In  thus  binding  men  together,  in  re- 
placing war  by  peace,  in  making  it  gainful  as  well  as  right 
to  prefer  union  to  conflict,  language  has  borne  a  part  not 
second  to  that  of  any  other  faculty  of  man.  He  stands 
the  highest  of  beings  not  only  because  of  his  range  of  men- 
tal power,  but  because  of  his  sympathy,  in  so  far  as  he 
finds  his  chief  happiness  in  promoting  others'  weal.  Lan- 
guage, which  first  made  human  society,  is  to-day  remaking 
it  with  closer  ties  and  firmer  bonds  now  that  speech  is 
electric  and  voice  answers  voice  with  half  a  continent  be- 
tween. 


CHAPTER   XXVI 

THE  ANCESTRY  OF  MAN  IN  THE  LIGHT  OF  NINETEENTH- 
CENTURY    ADVANCES 

LANGUAGE,  the  theme  of  the  preceding  chapter, 
j  may  well  continue  to  occupy  our  attention.  Let  us 
listen  for  a  moment  to  the  click  of  a  telegraph  instrument, 
that  we  may  hear  another  message  than 

that     Committed     to     its     wire.        A     New  New  Departures. 

York  merchant,  his  words  reduced  to 
mere  dots,  dashes,  and  spaces,  is  sending  an  order  to  his 
partner  in  Hong  Kong.  Within  the  hour  he  may  receive 
intelligence  borne  to  Sandy  Hook  from  a  steamer  whose 
Marconi  apparatus  asks  only  ether  as  the  carrier  of  its 
pulses.  Next  he  may  converse  with  a  correspondent  in 
the  metropolis  of  Louisiana,  every  tone  and  cadence  of  his 
voice  clearly  transmitted  for  well-nigh  nineteen  hundred 
miles.  This  impressing  electricity  for  verbal  communica- 
tion is  a  radical  departure  from  all  previous  methods.  It 
is  not  as  if  light  of  redoubled  intensity,  a  mirror  of  sharper 
focus,  or  a  rocket  of  bolder  flight  had  given  a  new  breadth 
to  old  plans  of  signalling.  The  feats  of  electric  telegraphy 
and  telephony  stand  in  a  category  by  themselves,  distinctly 
separated  from  that  in  which  light  was  the  ministrant,  and 
this  new  category  is  one  of  vastly  wider  scope  than  the 
old.  What  is  true  of  electricity  as  a  conveyer  of  words  is 
equally  true  of  electricity  as  a  new  force  within  the  grasp 
of  man  for  manifold  other  services. 

379 


380     LIGHT   ON    HUMAN    EVOLUTION 

A  photograph  has  much  the  same  significance  as  the  tele- 
gram which  a  little  while  ago  we  overheard  as  it  sped  from 
New  York  to  Hong  Kong.  An  amateur  hands  us  what  on 
the  surface  is  a  picture  of  Brooklyn  Bridge,  beneath  the  sur- 
face much  more  appears.  Six  minutes  ago  he  snapped  his 
kodak  at  the  great  structure,  and  in  the  brief  interval  he  has 
developed  his  negative,  printed  and  fixed  a  clear  and  beau- 
tiful positive.  To  outline  the  bridge  with  a  pencil  in  this 
minute  and  accurate  fashion  is  utterly  beyond  our  ama- 
teur's powers,  and  might  severely  tax  the  skill  of  a  highly 
accomplished  draughtsman.  At  first  the  camera,  as  devised 
in  Italy,  was  employed  that  the  pencil  or  the  brush  might 
seize  the  lines  and  hues  of  its  images.  Pencil  and  brush 
were  cast  aside  when  means  were  found  of  making  light  im- 
print with  accuracy  and  permanence  every  detail  of  a  cam- 
era's image.  In  photography,  as  in  telegraphy,  progress 
has  lain  not  in  improving  an  old  method,  but  in  supplanting 
it  by  a  process  absolutely  different,  and  in  many  directions 
of  incomparably  broader  range. 

In  the  preceding  pages  there  has  been  a  brief  recital  of 
the  steps  by  which  the  mastery  of  fire  led  at  last  to  the 
subjugation  of  electricity,  and  depiction  for  the  first  time  in 
its  course  took  a  new  direction  by  the  capture  of  images 
in  the  camera.  While  the  path  in  each  case  from  the  old 
plane  to  the  new  was  unmarked  by  aught  in  the  least  re- 
sembling a  revolution,  there  was  certainly  a  revolution  of 
consequences  most  profound  when  once  electricity  and  the 
photographic  beam  had  become  the  docile  servants  of  man. 
Tlu^e  facts  are  typical:  progress  has  leaps,  as  radically  new 
powers  fall  under  human  control,  and  history  divides  itself 
into  chapters,  each  distinguished  from  its  predecessors  by 
the  arrival  of  man  at  a  new  resource  of  prime  dignity.  And 
these  resources  do  not  enter  the  field  of  effort  as  additions 
merely,  but  with  all  the  effect  of  multipliers,  as,  in  the  cases 


THE   ELECTRIC   LEAP   IN    SPEECH    381 

of  fire,  electricity,  and  the  photographic  ray,  we   have  re- 
marked somewhat  in  detail. 

As  we  traced  the  work  of  the  forerunners  who  smoothed 
the  path  for  the  electrician,  long  before  electricity  as  a 
distinct  force  was  recognised  at  all,  we 
saw  that,  however  long  and  circuitous  The  Latest  steps 
the  road  which  stretches  from  old  powers  Explain  the  First- 
to  new,  the  act  of  touching  the  goal-post 
is  sudden  enough.  All  that  is  needed  is  the  exceptional 
intelligence  of  a  Franklin,  a  Volta,  a  Henry.  And  thus 
the  latest  achievements  of  man  light  up  those  of  the  earliest 
days  in  which  he  deserved  to  be  called  human.  Two 
years  ago  there  was  discovered  on  Southampton  Island,  in 
Hudson's  Bay,  a  small  tribe  of  Eskimos  so  primitive  in  cul- 
ture as  to  be  destitute  of  metals.  These  men  doubtless 
could  speak  to  each  other  no  more  readily,  no  farther 
apart,  than  did  their  great-grandfathers  at  the  close  of  the 
eighteenth  century.  The  leap  in  verbal  communication 
which  has  taken  place  in  the  past  sixty  years  makes  it  easy 
to  comprehend  how  the  first  leap  in  language  occurred  on 
one  memorable  day  long  ago.  It  was  not  more  difficult 
for  a  progenitor  of  these  Eskimos  to  mean  "bear"  by  a 
bearish  growl  than  for  Professor  Bell  to  convert  the  word 
''bear"  into  electric  waves  from  which  the  sound  may  be 
recovered  after  a  journey  half-way  across  the  United 
States.  And  the  instant  that  in  ancient  times  a  sign  or  a 
sound  could  symbolise  and  recall  anything  beyond  sight 
or  hearing,  a  new  era  dawned  for  the  human  soul.  The 
distinction  that  lifts  man  incomparably  above  the  creatures 
next  to  him  is  not  a  matter  of  muscle,  nerve,  or  skull  capa- 
city so  much  as  the  intelligence  vitally  dependent  upon 
those  powers  of  expression  and  of  record  which,  to  repeat 
a  thought  of  Pascal,  make  mankind  as  one  man,  ever  living 
and  always  learning.      Throughout  the  pages  of  this  book 


3<S2     LIGHT   ON    HUMAN    EVOLUTION 

there  has  been  constant  reference  to  the  principle  of  per- 
mutation, formally  set  forth  on  page  3.  As  our  argument 
draws  to  a  close  it  may  be  fairly  said  that  there  is  much  to 
support  the  view  that  the  supreme  acquisitions  of  man,  as 
they  have  one  by  one  fallen  into  his  hands,  have  the  dis- 
tinctness one  from  another  of  the  successive  factors  in  a 
permutative  series,  and  enter  the  field  of  human  progress 
with  a  similar  multiplying  effect. 

Our  figures  on  page  3  indicate  something  further.      We 
have    seen    that    each    distinctively    human    resource    has 

given  rise  to  still  others,   which  spring 
Accelerations.        from    it   as    flower   from    seed ;    and    we 

have  observed  how  powers  old  and  new 
combine  to  yield  fruits  unimaginable  before  their  union. 
Professor  Rontgen's  discovery  of  the  X  ray  was  the  out- 
come of  uniting  the  utmost  expedients  of  both  electricity 
and  photography.  In  a  parallel  indebtedness  a  telegraphic 
pulse  too  feeble  to  actuate  a  pencil  or  a  pen,  however  nice 
of  poise,  may  register  itself  upon  a  sensitive  film.  The 
architecture  of  science  has  something  in  common  with  the 
rearing  of  an  arch.  Hour  by  hour  the  voussoirs  rise  from 
the  ground;  at  last  comes  the  supreme  moment  when  the 
keystone'  is  dropped  into  place,  and  now  that  each  half  of 
the  structure  finds  its  complement  in  the  other,  both  dis- 
play a  strength  wholly  new. 

When  once  a  trench  was  dug  between  the  stock  now 
human  and  its  next  of  kin,  either  by  superior  prehension, 
quicker  sight,  or  a  voice  readier  of  modulation,  that  trench 
soon  grew  to  a  gulf  by  swift  increase  of  the  particular  fac- 
ulty most  effective  in  lifting  man  above  the  simple  animal 
And  not  only  was  the  capital  of  human  intelligence  thus 
ased,  but  so  likewise  was  the  rate  of  interesl  at  which 
that  capital  was  gainful.  With  the  growth  of  intelli- 
gence due  to  the  mastery  of  fire,  its  kindler  came  at  length 
to    the   creation   of   that   subtiler  lire,  electricity,  rich   with 


WHY  LINKS   ARE   MISSING  383 

gifts,  a  few  of  which  have  been  noticed  in  these  pages. 
The  nineteenth  century  in  its  seizure  of  new  resources  of 
prime  dignity,  in  its  ingenious  development  of  the  vital  rela- 
tions between  each  and  every  other,  has  expanded  the 
realm  of  science  more  than  all  preceding  time.  The  rapid 
augmentation  of  effect  as  one  multiplier  succeeds  another 
in  the  permutative  series  on  page  3  would  seem  to  outline 
the  growth  of  human  mastership  with  distinct  verity.  Not 
only  is  the  pace  of  evolution  at  decisive  epochs  quickened 
to  a  leap,  but  these  leaps  may  take  place  at  intervals 
ever  shorter  as  intelligence  grows  keener,  more  alive  to  its 
opportunities ;  while  the  effects  of  these  leaps,  as  new  re- 
sources interact  one  with  another,  has  the  result  of  con- 
stantly accelerating  the  upward  march  of  man.  And  hence 
the  total  period  occupied  in  human  evolution  may  have 
been  much  shorter  than  is  commonly  supposed. 

The   accelerations   of   human   progress   afford   us  an  ex- 
planation of  the  gaps  which  divide  man  from  anthropoid — 
gaps  which  have  caused  many  students 
of  evolution  to  hesitate  in  accepting  the       Gaps  in  the  Gen. 
Darwinian    theory    of    human    descent.1        eaiogicai  Tree. 
Let  us  for  a  moment  observe  the  latest 
strides  of  mankind,  and  they  may  inform  us  as  to  the  char- 
acteristics of  his  earliest  upward  steps.      We  have  seen  in 
our  brief  survey  of  certain  fields  of  science  that  discoverers 
and  inventors  are  busy,  not  at  a  mine  of  great  but  definite 
riches,  but  rather  at  the  extension  of  a  sphere  which  touches 
an  ever  larger  surface  of  the  unknown  and  explorable,  the 
unattempted  and  feasible.      All  this  is  illuminated  by  the 
permutative  principle  to  which,  as  a  guiding  thought,  we 


1  Within  recent  years  there  has  been  much  discussion  by  evolutionists  of 
the  inheritance  of  acquired  characters.  It  would  seem  that  evidence  in  point 
is  adducible  in  the  lengthened  fingers  and  shortened  toes  of  modern  man  ;  they 
clearly  indicate  that  the  effects  of  use  and  disuse  are  cumulative  as  one  genera- 
tion succeeds  another. 


384    LIGHT   ON    HUMAN    EVOLUTION 

have  constantly  referred.  If  we  turn  to  page  3  once  more, 
we  shall  remark  that  5  factors  yield  120  permutations,  96 
more  than  the  product  (24)  of  4  factors  ;  while  the  product 
(24)  of  4  factors  exceeds  that  of  3  factors  (6)  by  only  18. 
The  difference  between  one  product  and  the  next  increases 
enormously  as  a  new  factor  enters  —  with  its  broadened 
play  of  interlacement.  The  progress  of  mankind  as  suc- 
cessively indebted  to  the  upright  attitude,  the  master}-  of 
fire,  articulate  speech,  writing,  and  the  conquest  of  electri- 
city, cannot  be  represented  by  so  simple  a  piece  of  arith- 
metic as  this,  yet  it  may  be  justly  said  that  there  is  an 
indication  of  truth  in  its  rapidly  expanding  divergence  of 
effect  as  a  new  factor  comes  into  the  account.  We  have- 
already  noted  with  somewhat  of  particularity  that  fire  itself 
has  not  broadened  the  horizon  of  the  worker,  the  explorer, 
and  the  thinker  as  much  as  the  capture  of  electricity  ;  and 
electricity  has  come  into  harness  too  recently  for  its  capa- 
bilities to  be  as  yet  fully  discerned. 

(  )ne  of  the  suggestions  which  led  Darwin  to  the  discov- 
ery of  the  law  of  natural  selection  arose  from  the  rule 
formulated  by  Malthus  —  that  organic  beings  tend  to  mul- 
tiply in  geometrical  progression.  That  rule,  however 
much  masked  and  modified  in  the  complexity  of  actual 
lite,  nevertheless  remains  potent  enough  to  explain  the  un- 
relenting struggle  for  existence  which  Darwin  has  so 
graphically  pictured  in  every  field  of  natural  history.  It 
is  in  that  struggle  that  favourable  variations  find  their 
opportunity  to  survive  and  to  propagate,  with  the  issue  "l 
types  of  life  better  adapted  to  surroundings  ever  changing, 
to  surroundings  ever  growing  in  the  main  more  diversi- 
fied. (  )f  similar  elucidating  value  are  the  figures  in  a 
permutative  chain  as  they  succeed  each  other,  ami  they 
supplement  the  suggestion  of  Malthus  in  a  telling  way. 
When  through  the  brain  of  a  primitive  Edison  the  idea 
flashes  that   lire,  which  he  has  unwittingly  kindled,  may  be 


PERMUTATION   EXPLAINS   MUCH    385 

intentionally  kindled  again  by  the  clash  of  flint,  or  the 
friction  of  sticks,  his  exceptional  wit  means  an  instant  and 
tremendous  impulse  forward,  first  for  himself,  next  for  his 
tribe  and  his  race.  And  this  act  of  genius  has  a  decisive 
result  in  competitions  which  mean  either  life  or  death. 

Let  us  imagine  two  modern  navies  equal  in  every  respect 
except  that  one  has  the  electric  telegraph  and  that  the 
other  has  not.  Which,  in  battle,  will  win  ?  Just  as  con- 
clusive must  have  been  the  verdict  when  arms  of  bronze 
were  opposed  to  weapons  of  stone,  or  other  equal  advan- 
tage came  into  the  hands  of  one  particular  tribe  or  race, 
while  their  rivals  missed  the  new  factor  of  supremacy  by 
however  little.  The  warfare  which  in  modern  times  has 
extirpated  so  many  native  races  in  America,  Africa,  and 
Australia,  may  have  had  its  counterpart  in  the  battles 
which  may  once  have  enabled  the  ancestors  of  these  very 
savages  to  be  victors  in  contests  where  they  alone  remained 
alive.  Thus,  for  the  third  time,  the  principle  of  permuta- 
tion casts  an  illuminating  ray  upon  the  descent  of  man,  by 
suggesting  how  it  may  have  come  about  that  here  and  there 
links  are  missing  to  connect  him  with  his  kindred,  to  make 
the  adducible  proofs  of  evolution  as  convincing  with  re- 
gard to  man  as  they  are  with  regard  to  other  species,  and 
to  nature  herself  as  a  whole. 

To  sum  up  in  a  final  word  the  conclusions  at  which  we 
have  arrived:  (1)  The  pace  of  progress  is  quickened  to  a 
leap  as  a  distinctly  new  resource  flowers  from  faculties  long 
enjoyed.  (2)  Such  a  resource,  when  of  prime  dignity,  en- 
ters the  field  of  human  capability  with  multiplying  effect. 
(3)  This  results  in  an  increasing  width  of  gap  between  the 
highest  and  lowest  human  races  as  evolution  takes  its 
course ;  and  effects  a  severance,  all  but  infinite,  betwixt 
man  and  the  primates  who  now  stand  next  beneath  him  in 
the  tree  of  life. 


APPENDIX 

THE    GOLDEN   AGE    OF    SCIENCE 

THE  nineteenth  century  offers  us  one  contrast  with  its  prede- 
cessors  more   conspicuous  and  significant  than   any  other. 
While  its  feats  of  science  far  outdistance  those 
The  supremacy  of      of  any  preceding  era,  and,  indeed,  in  many 
Science.  directions  exceed  the  sum  total  of  previous 

human  accomplishment,  its  additions  to  great 
literature,  to  the  masterpieces  of  fine  art,  are  not  striking,  either  in 
quality  or  compass.  The  artist  and  the  man  of  letters  are  perforce 
disposed  to  marvel  at  the  remoteness  of  the  day  when  sculpture, 
architecture,  and  poetry  reached  their  culmination  in  Greece  and 
Palestine.  To  come  to  supremacies  less  remote — Dante  and 
Shakespeare,  Titian,  Raphael,  and  Yalasquez  remain  unap- 
proached.  But  in  the  realm  of  science,  of  ordered  knowledge, 
we  face  to-day  the  east  and  not  the  west,  and  here  the  horizon 
ever  retreats  as  the  explorer  advances,  ever  widens  the  higher  he 
climbs.  The  distinction,  worthy  of  all  emphasis,  has  been  drawn 
by  Sir  William  Roberts: 

The  evolution  of  science  differs  fundamentally  from  that  of  literature  and  the 
fine  arts.  Science  advances  by  a  succession  of  discoveries.  Each  discovery 
constitute^  :i  permanent  addition  to  natural  knowledge,  and  furnishes  a  point 
of  vantage  for,  and  a  suggestion  to,  further  discoveries.  This  mode  of  ad- 
vance has  ii"  assignable  limits;  for  the  phenomena  of  nature— the  mat 
upon  which  science  work- — are  practically  infinite  in  extent  and  complexity. 

Ites  while   it  invi  It  creates  new  chemical  com- 

pounds, new  combinations  of  forces,  new  conditions  of  substances,  and 
strange,  new  environments  — such  as  do  not  exist  at  all  on  the  earth's  surface 
in  primitive  nature.  These  "  new  natures,"  as  Bacon  would  have  called 
them,  open  out  endless  vistas  of   lines    of   future   research.      The   prospects  of 

the  si  ientific  inquirer  are  t1  anded  by  no  horizon;  and  no  man  can 

tell,  nor  even  in  the  least  conjecture,  what  ultimate  issues  he  may  reach.    .    .    . 

386 


THE  GOLDEN    AGE   OF   SCIENCE     387 

The  difference  here  indicated  between  the  growth  of  art  and  literature  is,  of 
course,  inherent  in  the  subjects,  and  is  not  difficult  to  explain.  The  creation 
of  an  artist,  whether  in  art  or  literature,  is  the  expression  and  the  embodiment 
of  the  artist's  own  mind,  and  remains  always,  in  some  mystic  fashion,  part 
and  parcel  of  his  personality.  But  a  scientific  discovery  stands  detached,  and 
has  only  an  historical  relation  to  the  investigator.  The  work  of  an  artist  is 
mainly  subjective  ;  the  work  of  a  scientific  inquirer  is  mainly  objective.  When 
and  after  a  branch  of  art  has  reached  its  period  of  maturity,  the  pupil  of  a 
master  in  that  art  cannot  start  where  his  master  ended,  and  make  advances 
upon  his  work  ;  he  is  fortunate  if  at  the  end  of  his  career  he  can  reach  his 
master's  level.  But  the  pupil  of  a  scientific  discoverer  starts  where  his  master 
left  off,  and,  even  though  of  inferior  capacity,  can  build  upon  his  foundations 
and  pass  beyond  him.  It  would  seem  as  if  no  real  advance  in  art  and  litera- 
ture were  possible  except  on  the  assumption  that  there  shall  occur  an  enlarge- 
ment of  the  artistic  and  literary  faculty  of  the  human  mind.  No  such 
assumption  is  required  to  explain  and  render  possible  the  continuous  advance 
of  science.  The  discoverer  of  to-day  need  not  be  more  highly  endowed  than 
the  discoverer  of  a  hundred  years  ago ;  but  he  is  able  to  reach  farther  and 
higher  because  he  stands  on  a  more  advanced  and  elevated  platform  built  up 
by  his  predecessors.1 

Above   and  beyond   any  particular    gift    of   science, — a   new- 
chemical  element,  a  ray  of  new  penetration,  or  even  a  new  rule 
of  physical  and  chemical  action, — there  has 
*,  V^n?  °         been  evolved  something  more  and  crreater : 

Method.  °  ° 

nothing  else  than  perfecting  the  instrument 
by  which  discovery  carves  its  path  and  particular  rules  are  merged 
into  universal  law — the  scientific  method,  now  confessed  the  one 
trustworthy  means  for  the  winning  of  all  truth.  Beginning  in  the 
comparatively  simple  sphere  of  natural  science,  it  has  passed  to 
the  more  difficult  fields  of  art,  history,  and  criticism,  to  reforms 
social  and  political,  moral  and  religious.  In  all  its  work,  whether 
it  has  to  do  with  the  mere  machinery  of  the  livelihoods,  or  with 
the  things  of  the  mind  and  heart,  the  conscience  and  the  will,  it 
means  reality,  accuracy,  fidelity  to  the  directly  observed  and  care- 
fully comprehended  fact.  It  disregards  traditions,  legends,  and 
guesses,  however  closely  associated  with  great  names  or  hoary 
institutions.  In  their  stead  it  is  erecting  a  new  authority,  which 
finds  its  sanctions  in  knowledge,  in  observation,  experiment,  rea- 
soning, in  untiring,  impartial  verification.  When  it  gives  play  to 
the  imagination  and  offers  a  conjecture  in  the  hope  that  it  may 
be  helpful,  the  conjecture  is  plainly  labelled  as  such,  and  is  with- 

1  Harveian  oration,  delivered  before  the  Royal  College  of  Physicians,  Lon- 
don, October  18,  1897.     Nature,  October  28,  1897. 


388  APPENDIX 

drawn  the  moment  that  a  sound  objection  so  demands.  The  man 
of  science  ever  rejoices  when  he  finds,  as  he  often  can,  that  men 
of  old  had  a  forefeeling  of  modern  scientific  truth  ;  but  under  all 
circumstances  he  fully  declares  exactly  what  he  discovers,  how- 
ever much  his  disclosures  may  cause  a  valued  heritage  to  be 
disprized.  Triumphs  to  us  inconceivable  doubtless  await  the 
centuries  to  come,  but  there  will  remain  as  the  inalienable  glory 
of  the  nineteenth  that  to  the  old  question,  What  is  truth?  it  first 
gave,  not  the  old  answer,  Whatever  has  been  so  considered,  but 
Whatsoever  can  be  proved. 


INDEX 


Abney,  W.  de  W.,  photographic  inves- 
tigator, 304,  305  ;  photographs  ultra- 
red  rays,  339. 

Aborigines,  photographs  of,  300,  301. 

Absolute  zero,  72. 

Abstract  terms,  369. 

Accelerations  of  progress,  6,  382. 

Acetylene,  115. 

Acheson,  E.  G.,  carborundum,  114; 
graphite,  115. 

Acker  process  caustic  soda,  118. 

Adjectives,  369. 

Adulteration  detected  by  polarised  light, 

3°3- 
vEolipile,  Hero's,  29,  49,  52. 
Agamemnon,    British  navy,    cable-layer, 

197. 
Agave  palmeri,  36. 

Agriculture,     departments    of,     photo- 
graphs, 295. 
Ainos  as  fire-kindlers,  17. 
Air  liquefied,  72. 
Alarms,  automatic  electric,  174. 
Alchemy,  hopes  of,  13. 
Algol,  star,  photographed,  337. 
Alloys,    36,   42,   76;     electroplated    as 

such,  140. 
Almeida,  d',  Jose,  gutta-percha,  194. 
Alphabet,  origin   of,  375 ;    telegraphic, 

183. 
Aluminium,  produced  electrically,  117. 
Amateur,  scope  for  photographic,  304, 

305:  debt  of  photography  to,  305. 
Ammonia  as  refrigerant,  65. 
Amceba,  272. 

Ampere's  observations,  180. 
Ancestry  of  man  (Chapter  XXVI),  379. 
Andamanese,  fire  of,  13. 
Anderson,     Domenico,     photographer, 

284. 
Anomalies,  76 ;  of  heat,  76. 
Anthropology,    photography   aids,   300, 

301. 
Apaches  expert  fire-kindlers,  17. 
Appendix,  Golden  Age  of  Science,  386. 
Arabic  notation,  371. 
Archaeology,  photography  aids,  298. 
Archer  overcome,  38. 


Archer,  Scott,  uses  collodion  films,  291. 
Architect,  photography  aids,  298,  302. 
Architecture,  influenced  by  fire,  25;  of 

science,  382. 
Arctic  photographs,  302. 
Argon,  75  ;  inertness,  377. 
Arizonan  miner's  photographs,  304. 
Armstrong,  S.  T.,  gutta-percha,  194. 
Arrow  aflame,  31. 
Art,    fine,   and   photography,   307;    aid 

to  study,  284. 
Art  of  American  Indians,  301. 
Assiniboines  cooking,  26. 
Asteroids  discovered  by   photography, 

328. 
Astronomy,   orthochromatic    plates  in, 

284;  photography  and,  325. 
Atlantic  cables,  196. 
Atom  paints  its  portrait,  347. 
Attitude,  upright,  2,  n. 
Auroral  light,  130. 
Australia,  earthquake  in,  359. 
Autographs  transmitted  electrically,  171. 
Automatic  appliances,  electric,  174. 
Aztec  priests,  mirror,  46. 

Babcock  &  Wilcox  boiler,  59. 

Bacteriology,  photography  aids,  299. 

Baldwin,  locomotive,  55,  plate  facing 
57- 

Ball-bearings,  43. 

Balloon  photography,  298 ;  in  war, 
358. 

Balmain's  luminous  paint,  349. 

Barnard,  E.  E.,  on  planetary  photog- 
raphy, 325 ;  on  astronomical  photog- 
raphy instead  of  drawings,  326,  327; 
on  guiding  clock,  327  ;  discovers  comet 
photographically,  329. 

Batteries,  electric  (Chapter  XI),  135. 

Bavispe  earthquake,  10. 

Becquerel,  A.  E.,  phosphorescence,  348, 

355- 
Bell,  Alexander  Graham,  telephone,  229 ; 

photophone,  243. 
Bell,  Alexander  Melville,  incitement  to 

son's  researches,  229  ;  lip-reading,  369; 

Visible  Speech  and  Vocal  Physiology, 


389 


39° 


INDEX 


376;  visible  speech,  376;   World-Eng- 
lish, 376. 

Bell,  Louis,  Electric  Railway,  162. 

Benjamin,  Park,  Intellectual  Rise  in  Elec- 
tricity, 96. 

Bennett,  Charles,  improves  gelatin  emul- 
sion, 292. 

Berenson,  Bernhard,  on  photography  of 
paintings,  284. 

Bemardos  arc  process,  113. 

Beta  Aurigae,  336,  plate  facing  337. 

Betelguex,  star,  334. 

Bickmore,  A.  S.,  series  lectures,  278. 

Bird  toy,  314. 

Birds,  pedigree  of,  22. 

telephone  transmitter,  231. 

Blast-furnace  gases,  63. 

Bleek,  \V.,  Origin  of  Language,  370; 
benefits  of  language,  370. 

Blowers,  61. 

Blowpipe,  electric,  117. 

Bodleian  Library  photographs  books, 
310. 

Boiler,  steam,  Babcock  &  Wilcox,  52. 

Boissonas,  F.,  photograph  Mont  Blanc, 
297. 

Bolometer,  347,  spectrum  facing  347. 

Bond,  G.  P.,  photographs  moon,  325  ; 
photographs  nebula,  341. 

Boomerang  flight  photographed,  318. 

lii. t. mist  as  photographer,  294,  295. 

Bowditch,  H.  P.,  composite  photog- 
raphy, 319. 

Branly,  E.,  coherer,  219. 

Bridges,  Mr.,  photo-theodolites,  296. 

Bright,  Charles,  Submarine  Telegraphs, 
205. 

Brinton,  D.  G.,  on  sun-worshippers,  89. 

Bronze,  36-39. 

Brush,  C.  F.,  arc-lighting,  122. 

Buckingham.  C.  L..  on  diplex  teleg- 
raphy, 208  ;  Electricity  in  Daily  Life, 
208. 

I  '.in  l.ipest  telephonic  news  service,  238. 

Bunsen,  spectroscopy,  332. 

Burne-Jones.      Sir    1'..,    photographed, 

3°7- 
Burning-glass,  46. 

Butterfly  1  frontispiece),  288. 

Atlantic,    196-206;    aids   to   re- 
b,  253. 
Cable,  <  lommercial,  ( '<>  's  cable,  201. 

telegraphy  (Chapter  XIV),  193; 
message  photographed,  359. 

tet,  M .,  ball >  photography, 298; 

liqui  1  s,  69. 

111  carbide,  1 15. 

Camera,  imitates  eye,  272;   improved, 

277. 

(  anadian  National  Park  map,  997. 

<  anal.  Erie,  electric  traction,  166. 

( lanes  Venatici,  nebula  in,  342,  plate 
fai  ing  342. 

ion  button,  for  telephone,  232 ;  oxi- 
dation of,  for  production   electricity, 


251 ;  sensitive  to  light,  245 ;  photo- 
graphic process,  323. 

<  larbons,  lamp,  prices,  168. 
Carborundum,  114.  115. 
Carib  of  Guiana,  301. 

( larlin,  W.  E.,  photograph  pika,  299. 
Carmelite  Hospice,  no. 
Carnegie  Steel  Co.  s  electric  motors,  159. 
Carrier  pigeons  bear  microphotographs, 

280. 
Caustic  soda,  118. 
Cautery,  electric,  III. 
Cedergren,    H.    T.,    on    Swedish    tele- 
phone system,  241. 
Census  tabulator,  Hollerith,  170. 
Chappe  telegraph,  178. 
Charioteer,  constellation,  336. 
Chemistry,   dawn  of,  12;  combinations 

of,  376  ;  inertness,  377. 
Chill  due  to  expansion  of  gases,  70. 
Chimneys,  tall,  superseded,  60. 
Chinese   characters,   375;    flying   kites, 

314;  use  telephone,  239,  facing  239. 
Christmas,  90. 
("lark,  Latimer,  experiment  with  ocean 

cables,  205. 
Clarke,    1  .  \V  ,  on  chemical  elements, 

88;  Constants  of  Nature,  126. 
Clay  tablets,  28. 

( lleveland,  electric  traction,  164. 
Coherer,  219. 

Cold,  commercial  value  of,  67. 
Cole,    R.    S.,    Treatise  on    Photographic 

Optics,  276. 
Cole,  Timothy,  engravings,  309. 
Colour,  photographically  translated  into 

black  and  white,  281;    photography, 

285. 
Colour-screen,  283. 

<  lolours,  what  they  tell,  331. 
Combinations  facilitated  by  telegraphy, 

190,  191. 
Comenius  illustrated  books,  309. 

aphed,   329,  330,  plate 

facing  330. 
( lommercial  cable,  201. 
Common's  photograph  moon.  329. 
Communication  perfected  b)  electricity, 

248,  260. 
Composite     photography,    318.      plate 

facing   319;     111  stellar   spectroscopy, 

336. 
Concord  grape,  22. 
Condenser  for  ocean  cables,  204. 
Constructive    arts,    photography    aids. 

302. 

icl  unnecessary  for  electric  actua- 
tion, 173. 

<  looking,  10,  26. 

I  1.  discovered,  35;  hard  drawn,  in 

telegraphy,  187;  metallurgy,  44;  re- 
fined electrolvticallv,  139;  smelting, 
36. 

Copying  by  photography,  270. 

-   poles  tor  telegraph 
and  glass  insulators,  186. 


INDEX 


39 1 


Corona  photographed,  326. 

Coronium,  339. 

Cosmogonies  outworn,  92. 

Costs  reduced  with  widened  market,  167. 

Craig,  James,  "  Relation  of  Photog- 
raphy to  Art,"  307. 

Cro-Magnon  skull,  371. 

Crooke  foil,  136. 

Crookes,  Sir  William,  discovers  victo- 
rium,    339 ;    radiometer,    349 ;    bulb, 

349-  352- 

Crosby,  Oscar  T.,  Electric  Railway, 
162;   "  man-hours"  saved,  258. 

Cross-fertilisation  of  the  sciences,  74. 

Crowninshield,  F.,  on  art  and  photog- 
raphy, 307. 

Curie,  M.  and  Mine.,  discover  radio- 
active substances,  355. 

Cuvier's  catastrophes,  20. 

Daguerre,  photographic  inventor,  274; 

portrait,  facing  276. 
Daguerreotypes  copied  in  plating  bath, 

321. 
Dallmeyer,    T.     R.,     telephotographv, 

297. 
D'Almeida,  Jose",  gutta-percha,  194. 
Damaras,  fire  of,  13. 
Daniell  cell,  180. 
Darwin,    Charles,   photographed,   307; 

debt  to  Malthus,  384. 
Darwin,  G.  H.,  on  meteoric  swarm,  343. 
Darwinism,  4. 

Davison,  George,  landscapes,  307. 
Davy,    Humphry,    produces   arc   light, 

121  ;  decomposed   potash   and*  soda, 

141. 
Dawkins,  W.  B.,  on  bronze  axe,  38. 
Deaf-mutes,  photography  aids,  317, 
Decombe,  L.,  photographs  Hertz  waves, 

293- 

Deer  photographed  at  night,  facing  299. 

Delany,  rapid  telegraph,  169;  multiplex 
telegraph,  207;  synchronous  tele- 
graph, 214. 

Derrick,  electric,  159. 

Designer,  photography  aids,  306. 

Deslandres  investigated  bridge  strains, 

315- 

Development,  photographic,  274;  gallic 
acid,  290;  an  aid  to  quickness  of  im- 
pression, 293. 

Deville,  E.,  photographic  surveying, 
297. 

Dewar,  James,  experiments,  69,  75;  va- 
cuous bulb,  74  ;  flask,  78. 

Dexterity  and  mastery  fire,  23. 

Diamond,  combustible,  85 ;  artificial, 
116. 

Dimensions  of  photograph  easily  va- 
ried, 278. 

Diplomacy  affected  by  telegraph,  256. 

Dissipation  of  energy,  86,  87. 

Distillation,  fractional,  75. 

Division  of  labor,  photographic,  275. 

Dogs,  voices  of,  366. 


Domestic  uses  of  electricity,  249. 
Domestication   of  animals,   48 ;    N.    S. 

Shaler  on,  366. 
Doolittle,   T.   B.,  suggests  hard  drawn 

copper  wire,  187. 
Doppler,  C,  study  of  waves,  333. 
Dordogne  cave  carvings,  264. 
Douglas,  James,  on  copper  metallurgy, 

44  ;  modern  locomotion,  57. 
Dover-Calais  cable,  195. 
Doyen,  kinetographs  in  surgery,  318. 
Draper,    Henry,    stellar    spectra,    335 ; 

memorial,  335  ;   photographs  nebula, 

34i- 

Draper,  J.  W.,  takes  first  photographic 
portrait,  290;  photographs  moon,  325. 

Draper,  Miss  D.  C,  first  photographic 
portrait,  290. 

Draught,  mechanical,  61. 

Drawing  and  photography,  306. 

Drill,  fire,  17,  19. 

Dubois,  E.,  discovers  skull,  372. 

Duplex  telegraphy,  210. 

Diirer's  works  in  stereopticon,  279;  Lit- 
tle Passion,  279. 

Dyes,  fugitive,  useful,  282;  orthochro- 
matic,  283. 

Dynamo,  first,  107;  prices,  167. 

Earthquake,  causes  fire,   10;    recorded, 

359- 

Easter,  90. 

Easter  Islanders,  301. 

Edison,  incandescent  filaments,  124, 128  ; 
new  lamp,  128  ;  portrait,  facing  213  ; 
quadruplex  telegraph,  213  ;  inductive 
telegraphy,  216  ;  telephone,  229  ;  tele- 
phone transmitter,  231;  megaphone, 
235  ;  kinetograph,  kinetoscope,  316. 

Efflorescence  is  rapid,  5. 

Egyptian  alphabet,  375. 

Eickemeyer,  R.,  photographed,  307. 

Electric  arc,  first,  121 ;  in  metal-work- 
ing, 113- 

Electric  batteries  (Chapter  XI),  135. 

Electric  blowpipe,  117. 

Electric  casting  in  vacuo,  117. 

Electric  forge,  114. 

Electric  furnace,  114,  115. 

Electric  heat  (Chapter  IX),  no;  for 
warming  and  cooking,  118,  119. 

Electric  induction,  106. 

Electric  light  (Chapter  X),  121;  goes 
where  no  other  light  can,  133  ;  safety, 
133  ;  theatrical  uses,  133  ;  wholesome- 
ness,  133  ;  advantages,  134  ;  in  photo- 
micrography, 281. 

Electric  lines  of  force,  104,  105. 

Electric  railroads,  161 ;  benefits,  257. 

Electric  search-light,  132. 

Electricity,  conduction,  254;  converti- 
bility of,  256 ;  energy  in  its  best  phase, 
247 ;  in  the  service  of  mechanic  and 
engineer  (Chapter  XII),  153  ;  in  trans- 
mission motive  power,  153-156  ;  joined 
to  heat,  117;  mastery  of,  1 ;  most  de- 


392 


INDEX 


sirable  form  of  energy,  174;  municipal, 
258 ;  not  an  infant,  256;  and  photog- 
raphy as  allies  (Chapter  XXIV),  346, 
358;  production  (Chapter  VIII),  94; 
relations  with  heat,  7,  102;  relations 
with  magnetism,  103;  review  and 
prospect  (Chapter  XVIII),  247;  velo- 
city in  ocean  cables,  202. 

Electro-duplication  medals,  etc.,  137, 
138. 

Electrolysis,  141;  of  water,  145. 

Electromagnet,  209 ;  double  wound,  210. 

Electromobile,  148. 

Electroplating,  136,  137. 

Electrotypy,  138. 

Elements,  evolution,  88. 

Elkin,  W.   L.,   photographed   meteors, 

3"- 

Elmendorf,  D.  L.,  telephotography,  298. 
Engineering,  photography  aids,  302. 
English  dictionary,  extent  of,  375. 
Engraver,  photography  aids,  308,  358. 
Engraving  colour  values,  281. 
Erie  Canal,  electric  traction,  166. 
Eros,  asteroid,  329,  331. 
Eskimo  lamp,  12  ;  Southampton  Island, 

381. 
Ether  of  space,  80. 
Ethnology,   U.  S.   Bureau  of,   Reports, 

373- 

Evaporation,  chill  of,  65. 

Evolution,  human,  4;  chemical  ele- 
ments, 88;  astronomical,  344. 

Expression  in  photography,  320. 

Eye  imitated  by  camera,  272. 

Factory  system,  259. 

Fahie,  J.  J., History  Wireless  Telegraph, 
220. 

Faraday,  liquefied  gases,  68  ;  discovered 
induction,  106  ;  magneto  machine,  107, 
plate  facing  107;  portrait,  facing  105. 

Faraday,  cable-ship,  202. 

Fargis,  Rev.  G.  A.,  recorder,  360. 

Field,  Cyrus  W.,  Atlantic  cable,  196- 
201. 

Field,  Henry  M.,  History  Atlantic  Tele- 
graph, 199. 

Fire,  adding  fuel  to,  n  ;  and  electricity, 
relations,  7;  and  religion,  25,  89;  as 
ignited  in  nature,  10;  as  lure,  30; 
benefits,  91 ;  drill,  17,  19 ;  early  les- 
sons of,  12;  effect  on  soil  of,  12;  first 
uses  of,  24;  higher  teachings  of 
(Chapter  VII  I,  79  ;  in  signalling,  33  ; 
kindling,  2,  15;  by  ploughing,  18; 
by  sawing,  18;  mastery  of,  I,  9;  mod- 
ern dependence  on,  8,  9;  passive  en- 
joyment of,  10;  preserving,  13;  sup- 
planted by  electricity,  120,  261. 

Fire-fly,  Cuban,  131. 

Fires  caused  by  matches,  133. 

Fixation,  photographic,  270. 

Flame  and  its  first  uses  (Chapter  II),  8  ; 
first  gains  from  (Chapter  III).  J4  ; 
supplanted  by  electric  heat,  120. 


Flammarion,  photography  moon,  317. 

Flashing  a  filament,  125. 

Fleming,   Mrs.   W.   P.,    discoveries    b) 

337- 
Flexibility  of  electric  mechanism,  173. 
Flight,  problem  of,  314. 
Flint  kindles  fire,  15,  262. 
Flint-makers,  Brandon,  20. 
Flowering  is  rapid,  5. 
Fluorescence,  348. 
Force,  persistence  of,  250. 
Forestry,  photography  aids,  302. 
Forests  of  U.  S.  photographed,  295. 
Forge,  electric,  114. 
Forgery  detected  by  photography,  310. 
Form,   photographic  truth  of  (Chapter 

XX),  276. 
Foundry  rivalled  by  electro-deposition, 

137- 
Fox-Talbot,  photographic  inventor,  275; 

first  uses   paper  for   negatives,  290; 

photogravure,  322. 
Franklin  experiments,  94,  95. 
Frick  refrigerator,  66. 
Friction  absent  from  molecular  motion, 

255- 
Fuel  economy,  60;  in  metallurgy,  44. 
Fuel-gas,  62. 

Fuels,  various,  values,  10.  11,  14. 
Furnace,  electric,  114,  115;  control  fur, 

174. 
Fuse,  electric,  no,  in. 

Gallic  acid  in  development,  290. 
Galton,  F.,  composite  photography,  318  ; 

of  horses  and  cattle,  321 ;  expression 

in  photography,  320. 
Galvani  experiment,  100. 
( i.ilvanised  iron,  136. 
Galvanometer  invented,  181 ;  reflecting, 

205;  Lord  Kelvin's,  253. 
Gamma  Leonis,  335. 
Gaps  between  man  and  animals,  6,  37, 

382,  383. 
Gas-engine,  61 ;  produces  electric  light, 

122. 
Gases,  kinetic  theory,  84;    liquefaction 

of,  68,  69,  70. 
Geissler  tubes,  120. 
Gelatin  dry  plate  invented.  2<<2  ;   advan- 

293,  294;  bicbromated,  322. 
Geographer  as  photographer,  295. 
Geologist  as  photographer,  295,  297. 

■  try  of  dimensions,  60. 
Gesture  at  inception  language.  365,  367. 
Gibraltar,  ridge,  Africa  to,  20. 
( rilbert,  William,  95. 
Gill,  D.,  photographs  comet  and  stars, 

33°- 
Glaisher,  James,  balloon  ascents,  298. 

m-conductor,  187. 
Glass-making.  30;  by  electric  heat,  113. 
Glass,  Louis,  on  Chinese  use  telephone, 

230. 
Glow-worm,  131. 
"  Go,"  365. 


INDEX 


393 


Goddard,  J.  F.,  shortens  time  in  pho- 
tography, 291. 

Gold,  40;  recovered  electrolytically, 
140. 

Gold  King  Mine  transmission,  155. 

Goquet's  theory  of  origin  pottery,  28. 

Gramme  machine,  107. 

Graphite,  115. 

Gravitation,  mystery  of,  255. 

Gray,  Elisha,  harmonic  telegraph,  172; 
telephone,  229. 

Gray,  Stephen,  98. 

Great  Eastern,  cable-layer,  199,  200. 

Grimm,  Hermann,  revelations  stereop- 
ticon,  278. 

Guericke,  Otto  von,  96. 

Gum  bichromate  process,  323. 

Gutenberg  monument,  139 ;  movable 
types,  374. 

Gutta-percha,  194. 

Gyroscope,  lessons  of,  314. 

Haeckel,  E.,  on  Pithecanthropus  erect  us, 

372  ;  Last  Link,  372. 
Hale,  G.  E.,  spectro-heliograph,  328. 
Hale,  Horatio,  origin  languages,  372. 
Half-tone  process,  323. 
Hamilton,  A.,  Maori  Art,  301. 
Hand  useful  in  pointing,  365. 
Harvard      Observatory     photographs, 

331- 

Hawaii  and  wireless  telegraph,  225. 

Heat,  amode  of  motion,  82  ;  Tyndall  on, 
254;  banishment  of  (Chapter  VI),  64, 
248;  electric  (Chapter  IX),  no;  con- 
stant temperatures,  in,  in  metal- 
shaping,  111;  mechanical  equivalent 
of,  83. 

Heft,  N.  H.,  on  third-rail  system,  165. 

Heliograph,  178. 

Helium  discovered,  339  ;  inertness,  377. 

Helmholtz,  analyses  vowel  sounds,  229  ; 
theory  of  colour,  285. 

Henry,  electromagnet,  105;  induction, 
216  ;  observes  penetration  by  electric 
waves,  356  ;  telegraph,  181. 

Herbert,  George,  quotation,  344. 

Herschel,  Sir  John,  fluorescence,  348. 

Herschel,  Sir  W.,  compares  skies  to 
forest,  344. 

Hertz,  experiments,  218  ;  waves  photo- 
graphed, 293;  discovers  transparency 
of  metals,  349;  visible  light  but  one 
octave,  356. 

Hitchcock,  Romeyn,  on  fire-drill,  19. 

Holland,  W.  J.,  Butterfly  Book,  288. 

Hollerith  census  tabulator,  170. 

Hooke.Dr.,  telegraph,  177. 

Hopes,  baseless,  of  electricity,  259, 

Hopgood,  H.  V.,  Living  Pictures,  317. 

Horn,  bronze,  38. 

Horn-silver,  268. 

Hot  blast,  Neilson's,  43. 

Household,  electricity  in,  249. 

Houston,  E.  J.,  Electric  Street  Railways, 
162. 


Huggins,    Sir   William,    on   motion    in 

line  of  sight,  334  ;  stellar  spectra,  335  ; 

nebular  evolution,  340. 
Hughes,   D.   E.,   microphone,  wireless 

telegraph,  220;  telephone  transmitter, 

231. 
Huxley  on  Neanderthal  skull,  372. 
Hydrogen  spectrum,  332. 
Hyndman,  H.  H.  F.,  Radiation,  356. 

Ice,  64. 

lies,  George,  Class  in  Geometry,  60. 

Illustrator,  photography  aids,  306. 

Inclosed  arc-lamps,  131. 

Income,  average  American,  92. 

Indian  picture,  266  ;  pictographs,  373. 

Induction  in  ocean  cable,  203 ;  useful  in 

telegraphy,  215,  216. 
Ingersoll,  Ernest,  on  fire  as  lure,  31. 
Inheritance  acquired  characters,  383. 
Initiation   broadened,    169;    growth   of, 

63 ;  photographic,  267. 
Ink,  secret,  274. 
Insect  fertilisation,  21. 
Instantaneity,  electric,  made  useful,  171. 
Instantaneous  photography,  313. 
Insulation,  telegraphic,  182,  186. 
Intelligence  quickened,  46  ;   duplicated 

in  electric  mechanism,  175. 
Interference  waves,  80. 
Interlacements,  3. 
Interrupter,  Wehnelt,  226. 
Introductory  (Chapter  I),  I. 
Invention  is  imitation,  272. 
Iron,  39,  42;    and  oak   contrasted,  45; 

and  stone  contrasted,  45;  the  hinge 

of  electric   art,   267;    spectrum,    332, 

plate  facing  332. 
Ives,    F.    E.,    composite    heliochromy, 

285  ;  kromskop,  286. 

Janssen,  photographed  transit  Venus, 
317  ;  photographed  sun,  326;  sug- 
gested spectro-heliograph,  339. 

Japanese  modelling,  313. 

Jena  glass,  276. 

Joule,  J.  P.,  83. 

Jungfrau  Railway,  164. 

Kearton,  Cherry,  naturalist -photog- 
rapher, 299. 

Keeler,  J.  E.,  proves  Saturn's  rings 
meteoric,  338. 

Kekule  theory,  250. 

Kelvin,  Lord,  on  dissipation  of  energy, 
87;  portrait,  facing  206;  ocean  teleg- 
raphy, 204;  invents  reflecting  gal- 
vanometer, 205  ;  siphon  recorder,  206  ; 
galvanometers,  253;  on  cooking,  320  ; 
portrait  much  enlarged,  324. 

Kennelly,  A.  E.,  Electric  Street  Railways, 
162  ;  on  expert  telegraphy,  243. 

Kinetic  theory  gases,  84. 

Kinetograph,  316  ;  films,  facing  316. 

Kinetoscope,  316. 

Kirchhoff,  Charles,  on  fuel  economy,  44. 


394 


INDEX 


Kirchhoff,  G.  R.,  spectroscopy,  332. 
Kites,  in  meteorology,    298  ;    flown   by 

Chinamen,  314. 
Kleist,  Dean  von,  98. 
Kodak,   advantages    of,    304;    at    work, 

380. 
Kcenig,   R.,   drawings  of  sound-flame, 

360. 

Labour,  division  of,  photographic,  275. 

Lachine  Rapids  harnessed,  248. 

Lake-dwellings,  Swiss,  32. 

Lamp.  Eskimo,  12,  24;  first,  14;  incan- 
descent, 123;  effect  of  increased  vol- 
tage, 127;  sixteen-candle,  prices,  168. 

Landscape-gardening,  photography 

aids,  302. 

Lane,  J.  Homer,  87. 

Langley,  S.  P.,  on  cheapest  light,  131; 
bolometer,  346. 

Language  (Chapter  XXV),  364;  win- 
vocal,  367  ;  leap  due  to,  373 ;  as  so- 
cialise^ 377. 

Lauffen  and  Frankfort  transmission,  155. 

Laussedat,  Col.,  photo-theodolites,  296. 

Laws,  conflict  of,  76. 

Lea,  M.  C,  photographic  investigator, 

304.  3°5- 

Lead,  40  ;  why  best  for  storage  battery, 
145  ;  plates,  146. 

Leaps  of  progress,  5,  6,  20. 

Le  Gray  uses  collodion  films,  291. 

Lehigh  Valley  Railroad  inductive  tele- 
graph, 217. 

Lenard,  P.,  bulb,  349. 

Lenses,  accurate  camera,  276;  tested 
by  polarised  light,  303. 

Le  Sage  experiments,  179. 

Le  Sueur  process  for  sodium  and  chlo- 
rine, 141. 

Leyden  jar,  ocean  cable  like,  203. 

Light,  electric  (Chapter  X),  121 ;  cheap- 
ened by  service  motive  power,  161; 
first  artificial,  25 ;  producers,  their 
efficiencies,  122  ;  velocity  of,  79. 

Lighthouses  denoted  by  wireless  tele- 
graph, 224. 

Lightning,  photographed,  360,  plates 
facing  360. 

Literature,  photography  aids,  309. 

Locomotion,  modern,  57. 

Locomotive,  54,  55;  Baldwin,  plate 
facing  57;    rivalry  of  electric   motor, 

165- 

Lodestone,  94,  262. 

Lodge,  O.  J.,  coherer,  219;  telephone, 
235  ;  win  iph,  225  ;  Signal- 

ling Without  Wires,  356. 

I  .<  'mniid  experiments,  179. 

London,  electric  traction  in,  163. 

■  lined  photographically, 

303 
Lovers'  telegraph,  231. 
Lubbock,  Sir  John,  on  '   pa  "  and  "  ma," 

368. 
Luminescence,  349. 


Lure,  fire  as,  30. 

Lyra,  ring  nebula  in,  342,  plate  facing 
'342. 

Mach,  photography  plant  growth,  316. 

Machines,  united  with  electric  motors, 
173,  plate  facing  162;  explained  by 
kinetoscope,  318. 

McKinlev,  William,  bas-relief,  308. 

Maddux,  R.  L.,  invents  gelatin  drv 
plate,  292. 

Magnetic  lines  of  force,  104,  105. 

Mallery,  Garrick,  pictographs,  373. 

Malthus,  law  of,  384. 

Man,  ancestry  of  i  Chapter  XX  VI),  379,9. 

Manufacturers,  domestic,  259. 

Maori  art,  301. 

Marconi  wireless  telegraph.  217. 

Marey,  Movement,  photochronograph, 
315- 

Mastery  of  metals  (Chapter  IV),  35. 

Match,  phosphorus,  19. 

Maunder,  Mrs.,  photographs  corona, 
326. 

Maury,  Miss  A.  C,  discovery  by,  337. 

Maver,   William.   Jr.,  American   ; 
raphy,  213. 

Maxwell,  J.  Clerk-,  on  cross-fertilisation 
of  sciences,  74  ;  on  identity  light  and 
electricity,  218;  colour-photograpin  , 
285  ;  rings  of  Saturn  meteoric.  338. 

mics,  dawn  of,  12  ;  field  of,  broad- 
ened by  electricity,  175,  176. 

Medicine,  photography  aids,  299,  358; 
X-rays  aid,  353. 

Meissonier  and  photography  of  motion, 
312. 

Mendenhall,  T.  C,  Century  of  Electri- 
city, 203,  212;  on  duplex  telegraphy, 
212;  on  velocity  electricity,  202. 

Merriit,  Ernest,  photography  of  sound- 
•  361. 
J,  36. 

Metallurgy,  American,   57. 

Metals,  eh  hi  to,  4s ;  mastery  of  (Chap- 
ter IV),  35. 

Metal-working,  electric  motor  in,  1 
rology,    photography    aids, 
358. 

I  'lied,  311. 

Micrometer,  delicac)  of,  338. 
Microphone,  232. 
Microphotography,  280. 
Milk  splash  photographed,  312. 
Milton,  John,  pictures  Uriel,  244. 
Mimicry  and  naming,  366,  381. 
Mining,  electric  motor  in,  158. 
Mirror,  focussing  ^ohir  rays,  46. 
Moissan,  II..  furnace,  115,  116. 

<  -  medium  ol  exchange,  256. 
Montgomerie,    Dr.  W..    gutta-percha, 

194 
Moon  photographs,  325,  329. 
Moore,  D.  M.,  light,  130. 
Morse,  S.  F.  15..  tir>t  experiments,  182; 

telegraphs  through  water,  215. 


INDEX 


395 


Motion,  photography  of,  312  ;  in  line  of 

sight,  333. 
Motive  power  from  fire  (Chapter  V),  48. 
Motor,   electric,  108,    plate   facing  162 

and  machine  united,  158,   173,    plate 

facing  162. 
Miiller,  M.,  thought  and  language,  370 

Science  of  Language,  370. 
Multiplex  telegraphy  (Chapter  XV), 207 
Multiplication  contrasted  with  addition 

2. 
Municipal  electricity,  258. 
Munro,    Dr.  William,  Prehistoric  Prob- 
lems, 11. 
Music,  great,  why  recent?  365. 
Muybridge,  E.,  photography  of  motion, 

312;  electrical  control  of  cameras,  360. 
Myths  prophetic,  91. 

Naming  faculty,  367. 
National  Museum,  Washington,  aborig- 
inal art,  301 ;  photographic  exhibits, 

324- 

Naturalist,  photography  aids,  298,  299. 

Navigation  and  wireless  telegraph,  223, 
224. 

Neanderthal  skull,  371. 

Nebulas,  photographs,  330,  341,  plates 
facing  341,  342  ;  spectra  of,  333  ;  evo- 
lution of,  340. 

Nebular  hypothesis,  340;  modified,  342. 

Neighbourhood  guild  of  science,  257. 

Nernst  lamp,  128. 

New  England  electric  lines,  164. 

New  Zealand  aboriginal  art,  301. 

Newcomb,  Simon,  on  possible  limits 
universe,  88. 

Newton,  Sir  Isaac,  85. 

Niagara  electric  power,  154,  155,  158, 
248. 

Niagara,  U.  S.  navy,  cable-layer,  196. 

Nichols,  E.  F.,  photography  of  sound- 
flame,  361  ;  of  extremely  rapid  phe- 
nomena, 362. 

Nicholson,  J.  Whitall,  "The  West 
Wind,"  307,  plate  facing  307. 

Nickel,  39  ;  magnetism  of,  268  ;  plating, 
136. 

Nickel-steel,  42;  for  boilers,  60;  for  in- 
candescent lamps,  126. 

Niepce,  Nicephore,  photographic  pio- 
neer, 271;  portrait,  facing  274  ;  photo- 
graphic reproduction,  321. 

Norman  Conquest,  37. 

Oak  and  iron  contrasted,  45. 

Obsidian,  32. 

Oil-wells,  burning,  10. 

Onesti,  T.  C,  experiments,  219. 

Onomatopoeia,  368. 

Ordnance    survey    maps,   electrotvped, 

138. 
Orion,  nebula  in,  341,  two  plates  facing 

..341- 

Orsted's  discovery,  103,  180. 

Orthochromatic    plates,     282;    picture, 


lacing   283 ;    in   stellar   spectroscopy, 

335- 
Oxygen  from  liquid  air,  75. 
Oxyhydrogen  light,  127. 
Ozone  produced  by  electricity,  142;  uses, 

142. 

Pacinotti  ring,  107. 

Page,  Dr.,  experiments,  228. 

Paintings  photographed,  284. 

Paraguay  hornless  bull,  22. 

Parsons  steam-turbine,  53,  56,  plate 
facing  57. 

Pascal,  a  thought  from,  381. 

Peary  arctic  photographs,  302. 

Periodic  law,  89. 

Permutations,  3  ;  English  alphabet,  376  ; 
Arabic  numerals,  376 ;  notes  piano, 
376 ;  illustrated,  261,  381,  382,  383,  384, 

385- 

Persistence  of  force,  250. 

Personal  equation  eliminated,  359. 

Petroleum,  14. 

Philadelphia,  City  Hall  dome,  electro- 
plating, 137. 

Philosophy,  scientific,  92,  387. 

Phoenicians  and  alphabet,  375. 

Phonograph  electrically  actuated,  168. 

Phosphorescence,  348,  355. 

Photochronograph,  Marey's,  315. 

Photography,  4;  threshold  of  (Chapter 
XIX),  262;  microscope,  280;  ortho- 
chromatic,  282;  reductions,  280;  stere- 
opticon,  278  ;  colour,  285  ;  of  the  skies 
(Chapter  XXIII),  325  ;  and  electricity 
as  allies  (Chapter  XXIV),  346,  358; 
a  new  departure,  380. 

Photogravure,  322. 

Photomicrographs,  280. 

Photophone,  243. 

Photo-sculpture,  G.  G.  Rockwood,  308. 

Photo-theodolites,  296. 

Photo-zincography,  322. 

Physician,  photography  aids,  299. 

Physiologist,  photography  aids,  299,  300. 

Pickering,  E.  C,  uses  doublet,  331  ;  on 
value  spectroscope,  336. 

Pickering,  William,  discovers  ninth  sat- 
ellite Saturn,  329. 

Pictographs,  North  American,  373. 

Pictorial  photography,  305. 

Pictures,  Indian,  265,  266. 

Pika,  plate  facing  299. 

Pinchot,  Gifford,  forestry  photographs, 

295- 

Ptthecanthroptis  credits,  371. 

Plate,  rolled,  135. 

Plateau's  zoetrope,  314. 

Platinum  for  incandescent  lamps,  126. 

Play  and  work,  262. 

Player,  J.  Hort,  photography  by  absorp- 
tion, 270. 

Poison  removed,  26. 

Poitevin,  carbon  process,  323. 

Polarised  light  a  searcher,  303. 

Polarity  reversed  (illus.),  210. 


396 


INDEX 


Pompeii,  33. 

Ponton,  bichromated  gelatin,  322. 

Porta,  inventor  camera  obscura,  271. 

Portraits  transmitted  electrically,  171. 

Pottery,  27;  probable  origin,  28. 

Preece  inductive  telegraph,  217. 

Prescott,  G.  I!.,  Speaking  Telephone, 230. 

Prices  lowered  with  widened  market, 
167. 

Printing,  invention  of,  374. 

Progress  has  leaps,  5,  380. 

Projectiles  photographed,  312. 

Propeller,  steamer,  electrically  con- 
trolled, 174. 

Properties  of  matter,  126  ;  due  to  mo- 
tion, 85,  255;  undesired,  are  sugges- 
tive, 282. 

Puma  spots  appear  in  photograph,  300. 

Pump-drill,  Iroquojs,  17. 

Punic  wars,  telegraph,  177. 

Quadruplex  telegraphy,  213. 
Quick  plates  (Chapter  XXll),  311. 

Railroad,  electricity  in  service  of,  249; 

indebted  to  telegraphy,  257. 
Raps,  Dr.,  photography  of  sounds,  360. 
Rayleigh,  Lord,  photographed  bursting 

bubble,  312. 
Reduction,  photographic,  280. 
Refrigeration,   effects  extreme,  73,  74 ; 

value,  77. 
Refrigerator,  Prick,  66. 
Reid,  James  1).,  Telegraph  in  America, 

184. 
Reis,  J.  P.,  telephone,  228. 
Relays  of  old,  168;  telegraphic,  168,  184. 
Religious  fires,  13,  19,  25,  89. 
Remington  and  photography  of  motion, 

312. 

iters,  telegraphic,  169. 
Representation,  its  beginnings,  263  ;  new 

departure  in,  267,  273. 
Reproduction,  photographic,  321. 
Research,  claims  of,  251 ;  electricity  in, 

250;  rewarded   in  photography,  345; 

by  X-rays,  357. 

>h  lines,  188. 
Reversibility  of  dynamo  and  motor,  108. 
Reversible  chemical  processes,  144. 
Reversing-key,  209,  210. 
Revolution,  electric  and   photographic, 

380. 
Richmond,  Virginia,  railway,  162. 
Ri  tbei  t  i,  [saac,  nebulai  1  volution,  341 ; 

Photographs  of  Stars,  star  ( 'lusters,  ami 

Nebula,  342. 
Roberts,   Sir    William,   on    science  and 

art,  386. 
Roberl  -Au  ten,    Sir    William,    experi- 
ments with  alloys,  36  ;   on  Steel,  42. 
Korku 1.  t ,.  1 .,,  photo-sculpture,  pho- 

to-i  ffigies,  308. 
Roller-':  11 

Roman  Catholic  Church,  new  Bre,  19. 
Roman  numerals,  371. 


Romans,  fire  of,  13. 

R  imi  1  establishes  velocity  light,  79. 

Ronalds,  Francis,  experiments,  180. 

Rontgen,  X-rays,  348,  350;  tube  pho- 
tographing bones  of  hand,  352 ;  in 
surgery  and  medicine,  353;  as  di 
ters,  354;  disclose  growth,  354;  ex- 
pose adulteration,  354  ;  and  telegraph, 
257- 

Koteh,  A.  I..,  meteorologist,  298. 

Rowland  solar  spectrum  photographed, 
332. 

Ruhmkorff  coil,  157. 

Rumford,  Count,  82. 

Runge,  C,  ascertains  longitude  photo- 
graphically, 303. 

Russell,  H.  C.,  on  stellar  photographs, 
337- 

Russell,  W.  J.,   photographs   from    in- 
visible rays,  355. 

Rutherfurd,  L.  M.,  photographs,  325. 

St.  Victor  uses  glass  for  negatives,  291. 

Salt,  production  of,  29. 

Salva,    experiments,    179;    recommends 

resin  as  non-conductor,  193. 
Santa  Ana  River  transmission,  156. 
Saturn's  ninth  satellite  discovered,  329  ; 

rings  meteoric,  338. 
Schaaf,  E.  <>.,  medical  camera,  358. 
Schmidt  compound  engine,  52, 

Schoolcraft,  H.  R.,  Indian  Tribes,  266. 

Schultze,  photographic  pioneer,  269. 

Schweigger  invents  galvanometer,  180. 
ce,  golden  age  of,  386. 

Scientific  method,  387. 

Screen,  colour,  283. 

Scripture,  E.   W.,  on   value  of  illustra- 
tions, 309. 

Search-light,  electric,  132. 

Seclusion  feasible  with  electric  mecha- 
nism, 172. 

Seeing  through  wires,  245. 

Selenium,  characteristics  utilised,  174; 
in  photophone,  244. 

Senses    educated   and    quickened,    242, 
337- 

Shaler,  N.  S.,  Domesticated Animals, 366. 

Shipboard,  electric  motors  on,  159,  160. 

Ship-building,  photography  aids,  302. 
.   ( reorge,   111,  photograph  deer, 
plate  facing 

Shot  1  d  in  flight,  312. 

Siemens'  regenerative  furnace,  44  ;  sub- 
marine wiii 

Sight,   supersedme  touch,  272;  devel- 
oped before  hearing,  364. 

Signals,  fire,  smoki 

nee  common  things,  8. 

Silver,  reco\ ered    el«  b  140; 

the  pivot  ot  photograph} ,  208. 

Siphon  recorder  and  record,  206. 

Skill  of  lower  animals,  1 1. 

Skulls,  three  remarkable,  371. 

Slaw  ianofl  art  pr<  tcess,  1 13, 

Smallpox  detected  in  photograph,  300. 


INDEX 


397 


Smoke  signals,  33. 

Snow  crystals  photographed,  281. 

Sodium  hyposulphite,  270. 

Solar  eclipse,  in  drawings,  326;  in  pho- 
tographs, 326. 

Sommering  experiments,  180. 

Sound,  affected  by  motion  of  sounder, 
333;  discloses  form,  347;  photo- 
graphed, 360. 

Space,  occupied,  limits,  88. 

Spectro-heliograph,  338. 

Spectroscopy,  331. 

Spectrum  of  sun  lengthened  by  bolome- 
ter, 348,  facing  plate  347;  of  iron  and 
of  sun,  332,  facing  plate  337. 

Speech,  articulate,  2,  3,  367.  See  Lan- 
guage. 

Spencer,  Herbert,  quoted,  7. 

"Sports,"  22. 

Star  chart,  photographic,  331. 

Stars  discovered  by  photography,  338. 

Staten  Island  Railroad  inductive  tele- 
graph, 216. 

Statuary  electrolytic,  138,  139. 

Steam,  high-pressure,  50. 

Steamboat,  first,  55. 

Steam-boiler  improved,  58. 

Steam-engine,  49;  big,  60;  compound, 
51,52;  marine,  50;  displaced  by  elec- 
tric motors,  160,  161. 

Steamships,  50. 

Steam-turbine,  52,  plate  facing  57. 

Stearns,  J.  B.,  duplex  telegraph,  212. 

Steel,  41. 

Steinheil's  discovery,  182,  185. 

Stephenson,  George,  55. 

Stereopticon,  uses  and  revelations,  278. 

Stereoscope,  277. 

Stevens,  B.  F.,  Manuscripts  relating  to 
America,  310. 

Stieglitz,  A.,  pictorial  photography,  307. 

Stockholm,  telephone  in,  240. 

Stoker,  mechanical,  61. 

Stokes,  Sir  G.,  fluorescence,  348. 

Stone  and  iron,  contrasted,  45  ;  boilers, 
26  ;  in  fire,  12. 

Storage-battery,  143 ;  as  reservoir  and 
equaliser,  147;  for  traction,  162. 

Strike-a-light,  16,  20. 

Sturgeon's  electromagnet,  104. 

Subtraction,  profit  of,  77. 

Suburban  electric  traction,  163,  164. 

Subways,  electric,  162. 

Sugar-refining,  electricity  in,  142. 

Sun,  photographed,  311  ;  spectrum  of, 
332,  plate  facing  337  ;  worship,  89. 

Superheater,  51. 

Surgery,  kinetographs  in,  318  ;  X-rays 
aid,  353. 

Surveying,  photographic,  296,  297. 

Swan,  J.  W.,  incandescent  lighting,  124, 
125- 

Sweden,  telephone  in,  240. 

Synchronism  in  electrical  mechanism, 
171. 

Synthesis,  electrical,  142,  143,  152. 


Tanning,  electric,  142. 

Taylor,  Isaac,  The  Alphabet,  374. 

Telegraphy,  electric,  forerunners,  178  ; 
benefits,  188,  189,  190,  257 ;  and  rail- 
roads, 257  ;  diplex,  208  ;  duplex,  210 
(illus.l,  2ii,  212;  expert,  243;  first 
American,  183;  grasp  of,  226  ;  Gray's 
harmonic,  172 ;  Henry,  181 ;  induc- 
tive, 216;  in  war,  385;  land  lines, 
(Chapter  XIII),  177;  cable  (Chapter 
XIV),  193  ;  multiplex  (Chapter  XV), 
207;  quadruplex,  213;  wireless 
(Chapter  XVI),  215;  synchronous, 
214 ;  a  new  departure,  379. 

Telephone  (Chapter  XVII),  228;  dis- 
sected, 233;  long-distance,  234,  236; 
uses,  234,  236  ;  barbed-wire  fences  for, 
238  ;  Budapest  news  service,  238  ;  in 
Sweden,  240;  rivalry  with  telegraph, 
241;  rural  service,  238;  sensitiveness, 
242. 

Telephotography,  297,  plate  facing  298. 

Telescopic  lenses  tested  by  polarised 
light,  303. 

Tesla  light,  129,  130. 

Thermo-battery,  102. 

Thermometer,  electrical,  103;  in  cylin- 
der's mass,  173. 

Third-rail  system,  165,  plate  facing  165. 

Thompson,  S.  P.,  phosphorescence, 
355  ;  Light,  Visible  and  Invisible,  356. 

Thomson,  Elihu,  utility  extreme  cold  ; 
electric  welder,  112;  high-tension  ex- 
periments. 252. 

Thomson,  Sir  William.  See  LordA'elvin. 

Three-colour  photographic  process,  287. 

Thurston,  R.  H.,  on  steam-pressures, 
50 ;  on  most  efficient  American  en- 
gine, 52. 

Time  infinitesimal,  photography  in,  362  ; 
reductions  in  photography,  290. 

Tin,  36. 

Tinder,  16,  17. 

Top  studied  mathematically,  313. 

Torpedo,  actuated  electrically,  169  ;  with- 
out wires,  224. 

Toys,  significance  of,  313. 

Traction,  electric,  161. 

Transformer,  156. 

Treadwell,  Augustus,  Jr.,  Storage  Bat- 
tery, 147. 

Triggers  pulled  electrically,  169. 

Tripler  liquefies  air,  72. 

Trowbridge,  John,  on  Hertz  waves,  225  ; 
high-tension  experiments,  252. 

Troy,  fall  of,  telegraphed,  177. 

Trusts,  problem  of,  192. 

Turbine,  steam,  52,   plate  facing  57. 

Turbinia,  56. 

Tyndall,  John,  Heat  as  a  Mode  of  Motion, 
254  ;  researches,  254. 

Types,  movable,  374. 

Ultra-violet    ray    discharges   electrified 

plate,  350. 
Universe  enlarged,  254. 


398 


INDEX 


Vacuum,  produced  by  extreme  cold,  74. 

Vail,  Alfred,  invents  telegraphic  alpha- 
bet, 182. 

Vancouver,  telegram  Montreal  to,  169. 

Van  Vleck,  John,  generating  plant,  60. 

Varley,  s.  A.,  experiments,  218. 

Verbs,  369. 

ility  of  electricity,  249. 

Very,    F.'   W.,     "  Cheapest     Form    of 
ght,"  131. 

Victorium,  339. 

Vision  develops  before  hearing,  364. 

Vogel,  H.  \\'.,  orthochromaue  plates, 
282. 

moes,  10;  their  lesson,  21. 

Volta,  pile,  100;  crown  of  cups,  101, 
illustration  facing  107 ;  portrait,  fa- 
cing 100;   influence  of,  5,  27. 

Voltages,  highest  easiest  transmitted, 
155- 

Walker,  C.  V.,  submarine  line,  195. 
War,  an  evil  of,  removed  by  telegraphy, 

189  ;  risk  for  lack  cable,  198. 
Water-supply,  258. 

Watson,  Dr.  William,  experiments,  179. 
Watt  improves  steam-engine,  49. 
Weather  Bureau  uses  telegraph,  189. 
Weber  experiments,  181. 
Wedgwood,  photographic  pioneer,  269 
Wehnelt  interrupter,  226. 
Welder,  electric,  112. 
Welsbach  burner,  128. 


Wi  stinghouse,  steam-engine,  51 ;  turbo- 
alternator,  plate  facing  57. 

Wheatstone  and  Cooke  telegraph,  182. 
■  ring-gallery,  world  a,  192. 

Whitney,  \V.   D.,  language  why  vocal, 
367 ;    Life  and   Growth  of  /.an. 
367.  371;  advantages  language,  370 ; 
Max  .Miiller  ami  the  Science  of  Lan- 
guage, 370. 

Will,  signature  to,  appears  in  photo- 
graph, 300. 

Wireless    telegraphy    (Chapter    XVI), 

215- 
\\  nt,  Herr,  discovers  Eros,  329. 
Woods  easiest  kindled,  16. 
Work  anu  play,  262. 
World  a  whispering-gallery,  192. 
Writing,  2,  263,  373. 

X-rays,  348. 

Yacht  race  reported  by  wireless  tele- 
graph, 223. 

Young,  C.  A.,  General  Astronomy,  88. 

Young,  Thomas,  argues  for  ether,  80; 
error  of,  109;  theory  of  colour,  285. 

Zenger,  M.,  photographs  at  night,  327. 

Zero,  absolute,  72. 

Zinc  photo-process,  322. 

Zoetrope,  314. 

Zoroaster,  90. 

Zuui  priests  as  fire-kindlers,  17. 


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